arXiv subjects

Lei Chen

Publications and source records attributed to Lei Chen.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2026

SwiftMem: Fast Agentic Memory via Query-aware Indexing

Agentic memory systems have become critical for enabling LLM agents to maintain long-term context and retrieve relevant information efficiently. However, existing memory frameworks often perform query-agnostic retrieval over the full memory embedding space even when their storage layer is backed by efficient vector indexes such as HNSW. This full-scope retrieval path creates latency bottlenecks as memory grows, hindering real-time agent interactions. We propose SwiftMem, a query-aware agentic memory system that narrows retrieval to query-relevant memory subsets through specialized indexing over temporal and semantic dimensions. Our temporal index enables logarithmic-time range queries for time-sensitive retrieval, while the semantic DAG-Tag index maps queries to relevant topics through hierarchical tag structures. To address memory fragmentation during growth, we introduce an embedding-tag co-consolidation mechanism that reorganizes storage based on semantic clusters to improve locality. Across LoCoMo and LongMemEval$_S$, SwiftMem reaches 10.8/12.7 ms search latency while maintaining competitive LLM-judge accuracy against strong HNSW-backed memory systems. On the calibrated benchmark, LoCoMo Refined, SwiftMem remains close to the top LLM-judge score while preserving an order-of-magnitude latency advantage.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2026

Exceptional groups and the s-arc-transitivity of vertex-primitive digraphs, II

In this paper, we study the primitive actions of almost simple groups with socle $E_7(q)$ or $E_8(q)$ on an $s$-arc-transitive digraph. Our motivation goes back to the question of whether $s$ is bounded above for finite connected $G$-vertex-primitive $s$-arc-transitive digraphs that are not directed cycles. The question has been reduced by Giudici and Xia to the case where $G$ is almost simple. This work succeeds our 2025 paper (Yin and Chen), which addressed ${}^3\!D_4(q)$, $G_2(q)$, ${}^2\!F_4(q)'$, $F_4(q)$, $E_6(q)$, and ${}^2\!E_6(q)$. Together with Chen, Giudici, and Praeger's work on ${}^2\!B_2(q)$ and ${}^2\!G_2(q)$, it answers the question for all exceptional groups.

math.GR↗

arXiv2026

Explaining and Tuning Transformer-based LLMs in Arithmetic Tasks with Human Strategies

Transformer-based large language models (LLMs) continue to achieve state-of-the-art performance across various natural language processing tasks. However, their subpar performance on seemingly elementary problems, such as basic arithmetic, raises concerns about model reliability, safety, and ethical deployment. In this study, we demonstrate that the performance of a vanilla Transformer model trained on integer arithmetic tasks can be improved using methods effective for human learners. We begin by decomposing the arithmetic task into well-defined subtasks and conducting loss convergence order analysis together with ablation studies for each subtask. Our findings reveal that LLMs exhibit learning patterns similar to those of human learners, with a faster learning speed for simpler subtasks compared to more complex ones. In addition, we successfully improved the accuracy of LLMs by applying problem-solving strategies and cognitive empowerment methods shown to enhance the performance of human learners. This suggests that transformer-based LLMs may share cognitive processes with human learners in arithmetic. Lastly, we provide a comprehensive demonstration of our method's effectiveness, including significant accuracy improvement experiments, visualization verification, and explanation-based analysis to illuminate the intricacies of LLMs in arithmetic learning. In general, this work explores the potential similarities between transformer-based LLMs and human learners, supported by explainable AI (XAI) verifications, ultimately fostering trust in LLMs for critical and high-stakes applications.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2026

Orbital-selective electron correlations in high-$T_{\rm c}$ bilayer nickelates: from a global phase diagram to implications for spectroscopy

Motivated by the high temperature superconductivity observed in the bilayer nickelate La$_3$Ni$_2$O$_7$ and the spectroscopic evidences of strong electron correlations in this compound, we address the role of its multiorbital electron correlations by proposing a global phase diagram of a bilayer two-orbital Hubbard model. We find a Mott transition developing at half filling, and identify strong orbital selectivity when the system is at the physical electron count. The orbital selectivity is manifested in the formation of interlayer spin singlets between electrons in the $z^2$ orbitals. These features lead to a strong renormalization of the electronic band structure while sustaining a sizable splitting between the bonding and antibonding $z^2$ bands. The proposed orbital-selective correlations naturally explain a series of features as observed in the angular resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and optical conductivity measurements in La$_3$Ni$_2$O$_7$. Our results provide a basis to understand both the normal state and the high temperature superconductivity of multilayer nickelates and thereby elucidate correlated superconductivity in general.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2026

Quantum Fisher information of magnetic quantum phase transition on Kondo lattice

Strange metals exemplify highly collective quantum many-body systems that call for new means of characterization, and there is considerable potential for quantum information approaches contributing to the cause. We investigate multipartite entanglement across the quantum phase transition of a Kondo lattice model using the quantum Fisher information (QFI). We show that the QFI associated with the spin components transverse to the order parameter characterizes the destruction of heavy quasiparticles in the Kondo-destroyed magnetic-ordered phase. The physical origin of this observation is elucidated through an analysis of the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model. We propose to test the results in terms of both unpolarized and polarized inelastic neutron scattering measurements in the ordered part of the heavy fermion phase diagram. Our findings illustrate how different operators of a many-body system can be employed to not only witness multipartite entanglement in different sectors and but also elucidate the overall physics across different parts of the phase diagram.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2026

The Efficiency Costs of Information Assurance in AI-Enabled Labor Markets: Evidence from LinkedIn's Policy Changes

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) systems rely heavily on user-generated data for training. As governments and platforms impose increasing restrictions on the use of personal data, an important question is whether limiting access to user data for AI training affects the performance of AI-enabled economic systems. We examine this question in the context of labor-market matching. Our setting exploits a unique sequence of LinkedIn policy changes: the quiet introduction of user data collection for AI training in August 2024, the restriction of Hong Kong user data from AI training in October 2024, and the subsequent restoration of data access in November 2025. Using employment and job-posting data from Revelio Labs and a Difference-in-Differences design comparing Hong Kong and Singapore, we find that the restriction significantly increased labor-market frictions: employee turnover increased and tenure declined, vacancies remained open longer, job-posting match rates fell, and wages decreased. To strengthen the causal interpretation, we examine the full policy lifecycle: labor market outcomes improved following LinkedIn's initial AI rollout, deteriorated after the restriction, and recovered after the restoration. Similar patterns emerge in an independent cross-country comparison between regions with and without access to LinkedIn's user data for AI training. The effects are strongest among firms that rely more heavily on platform-mediated recruitment. Our findings show that restricting access to user data for AI training can affect labor-market outcomes through AI-enabled matching systems and contribute to ongoing discussions regarding AI governance, privacy regulation, and the economic consequences of data access.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2026

Navigating the Mirage: A Dual-Path Agentic Framework for Robust Misleading Chart Question Answering

Despite the success of Vision-Language Models (VLMs), misleading charts remain a significant challenge due to their deceptive visual structures and distorted data representations. We present ChartCynics, an agentic dual-path framework designed to unmask visual deception via a "skeptical" reasoning paradigm. Unlike holistic models, ChartCynics decouples perception from verification: a Diagnostic Vision Path captures structural anomalies (e.g., inverted axes) through strategic ROI cropping, while an OCR-Driven Data Path ensures numerical grounding. To resolve cross-modal conflicts, we introduce an Agentic Summarizer optimized via a two-stage protocol: Oracle-Informed SFT for reasoning distillation and Deception-Aware GRPO for adversarial alignment. This pipeline effectively penalizes visual traps and enforces logical consistency. Evaluations on two benchmarks show that ChartCynics achieves 74.43% and 64.55% accuracy, providing an absolute performance boost of ~29% over the Qwen3-VL-8B backbone, outperforming state-of-the-art proprietary models. Our results demonstrate that specialized agentic workflows can grant smaller open-source models superior robustness, establishing a new foundation for trustworthy chart interpretation.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2026

Quantum-Geometry-Induced Superconductivity near a Fractional Chern Insulator

Recent moiré experiments and numerical studies of interacting Chern bands have revealed fractional Chern insulators, charge-density-wave order, and superconductivity as proximate correlation-driven phases in topological systems. How these phases compete or intertwine, and how quantum geometry shapes their interplay, remain open questions. Here we present an analytic study of competing correlation-driven phases in a partially filled Chern band using a coupled-wire construction and bosonization. The key ingredient is the coexistence of interaction channels that favor, respectively, a fractional Chern insulator (FCI) and a closely related anti-FCI (aFCI) state. The aFCI channel is specific to lattice Chern bands and is enhanced by the quantum geometry of the underlying band structure. We show that when both FCI and aFCI scattering channels are present, their interplay generates an effective coupling that drives a superconducting instability near the FCI phase. The same mechanism can also favor a charge-density-wave phase, depending on microscopic parameters. Using a perturbative renormalization-group analysis, we obtain the phase diagram and identify a superconducting regime adjacent to the FCI phase. We further estimate the superconducting transition temperature and show that it is enhanced by quantum geometry. Our results establish quantum geometry as an organizing principle for the interplay among FCI, aFCI, and superconducting correlations.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2026

Technical Report on the CVPR 2026@AdvML Workshop Challenge

Vision-language agents (VLAs) are increasingly used to interpret complex driving scenes and support safety-critical reasoning. This report presents the CVPR 2026@AdvML Workshop Challenge on adversarial multimodal attacks against autonomous-driving VLAs. Built on DriveLM-style multi-view visual question answering, the challenge represents each scene with six synchronized camera images and a structured collection of driving-related question-answer pairs. Participants generate adversarial images and suffix-only textual perturbations that induce model responses to deviate from reference answers while preserving image fidelity and limiting textual cost. The competition comprises two phases, with Phase II adding a hidden black-box model to assess transferability. We describe the task design, submission rules, evaluation protocol, and leaderboard results, and then examine five leading submissions for which technical reports were available. Across these reports, several recurring patterns emerge: image-side attacks are favored by the suffix penalty; scene-level, multi-view optimization is more effective than treating views in isolation; QA types and graph structure provide useful priors for allocating attack budget; feature-space objectives can improve black-box transfer; and typographic content embedded in camera images exposes a persistent vulnerability in driving VLAs. These findings provide a practical reference for future robustness evaluation and defense design in multimodal autonomous-driving systems.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2026

BalDRO: A Distributionally Robust Optimization based Framework for Large Language Model Unlearning

As Large Language Models (LLMs) increasingly shape online content, removing targeted information from well-trained LLMs (also known as LLM unlearning) has become critical for web governance. A key challenge lies in sample-wise imbalance within the forget set: different samples exhibit widely varying unlearning difficulty, leading to asynchronous forgetting where some knowledge remains insufficiently erased while others become over-forgotten. To address this, we propose BalDRO, a novel and efficient framework for balanced LLM unlearning. BalDRO formulates unlearning as a min-sup process: an inner step identifies a worst-case data distribution that emphasizes hard-to-unlearn samples, while an outer step updates model parameters under this distribution. We instantiate BalDRO via two efficient variants: BalDRO-G, a discrete GroupDRO-based approximation focusing on high-loss subsets, and BalDRO-DV, a continuous Donsker-Varadhan dual method enabling smooth adaptive weighting within standard training pipelines. Experiments on TOFU and MUSE show that BalDRO significantly improves both forgetting quality and model utility over existing methods, and we release code for reproducibility.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2026

Handling Feature Heterogeneity with Learnable Graph Patches

In recent years, the rapid development of foundation models and graph pre-training technologies has spurred increasing interest in constructing a universal pre-trained graph model or Graph Foundation Model (GFM). However, a significant challenge is that existing models are unable to address feature heterogeneity in graph data without textual information, which hinders the transferability of graph models across different datasets. To bridge this gap, we propose the concept of learnable graph patches, which we regard as the smallest semantic units of any graph data. We decompose the graph into learnable graph patches by unfolding the node features and constructing corresponding patch structures separately. We then design a framework that mines transferable information from graph data across domains. Specifically, after extracting graph patches, we propose a patch encoder to extract knowledge from each unit and a patch aggregator to learn how the units are combined into a whole. Due to its domain-agnostic nature, the model can be applied to downstream data across different domains. Furthermore, we analyze the connection between our method and existing graph models, as well as the transferability of the node embeddings it generates. Empirically, our method not only achieves the capability to use multi-domain graphs for pre-training, but also shows enhanced performance across various downstream datasets and tasks. Moreover, we observe consistent improvement in downstream performance as the volume of pre-training data increases.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2026

A Unified Framework for Context-Aware and Relation-Aware Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has emerged as a paradigm for enhancing large language models (LLMs) with external knowledge, yet existing graph-based methods face a fundamental limitation: entity-centric and chunk-centric approaches operate on representations anchored to original text without true knowledge fusion. While entity-centric methods connect logically related content and chunk-centric methods preserve context, both retrieve information separately through similarity search, missing emergent understanding from their synthesis. In this paper, we propose HyGRAG, a hierarchical graph RAG framework that transcends source documents by addressing three core challenges: constructing summaries that genuinely integrate contextual and relational information, leveraging these synthesized representations to access emergent knowledge during retrieval, and efficiently updating hierarchical structures for dynamic corpora. Specifically, we design hierarchical index structures over hybrid graphs with both chunk and entity nodes, then iteratively cluster them and generate LLM-based summaries. Then, we design context and relation-aware retrieval that searches across all abstraction levels while expanding through community membership. Moreover, we enable dynamic knowledge update through attachment-based algorithms with only local re-summarization. Experimental results show that HyGRAG improves the average accuracy of multi-hop reasoning tasks by 9.7%, while maintaining reasonable efficiency.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2026

Ling and Ring 2.6 Technical Report: Efficient and Instant Agentic Intelligence at Trillion-Parameter Scale

Efficient and scalable agentic intelligence requires models that can deliver both low-latency responses and strong reasoning capabilities while remaining practical to train, serve, and deploy. In this report, we present Ling-2.6 and Ring-2.6, a family of models designed to address this challenge at scale. Ling-2.6 is optimized for instant response generation and high capability per output token, whereas Ring-2.6 is tailored for deeper reasoning and more advanced agentic workflows. Instead of training from scratch, we upgrade the Ling-2.0 base model through architectural migration pre-training and large-scale post-training. This upgrade is guided by a unified co-design of model architecture, optimization objectives, serving systems, and agent training environments, enabling improvements in both model capability and deployment efficiency. At the architectural level, we introduce a hybrid linear attention design that integrates Lightning Attention with MLA, improving the efficiency of long-context training and decoding. To further enhance token efficiency, we optimize capability per output token through Evolutionary Chain-of-Thought, Linguistic Unit Policy Optimization, bidirectional preference alignment, and shortest-correct-response distillation. For agentic capabilities, we propose KPop, a reinforcement learning framework designed to support stable training of Ring-2.6-1T on large-scale environment-grounded data. KPop improves training efficiency through asynchronous scheduling across coding, search, tool use, and workflow execution, enabling scalable learning from complex agent-environment interactions. Together, Ling-2.6 and Ring-2.6 provide a practical pathway toward efficient, scalable, and open agentic systems. We open-source all checkpoints in the 2.6 family to support further research and development in practical agentic intelligence.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2026

Context-Driven Incremental Compression for Multi-Turn Dialogue Generation

Modern conversational agents condition on an ever-growing dialogue history at each turn, incurring redundant attention and encoding costs that grow with conversation length. Naive truncation or summarization degrades fidelity, while existing context compressors lack cross-turn memory sharing or revision, causing information loss and compounding errors in long dialogues. We revisit the context compression under conversational dynamics and empirically present its fragility. To improve both efficiency and robustness, we introduce Context-Driven Incremental Compression (C-DIC), which treats a conversation as interleaved contextual threads and stores revisable per-thread compression states in a single, compact dialogue memory. At each turn, a lightweight retrieve, revise, and write-back loop shares information across turns and updates stale memories, stabilizing long-horizon behavior. In addition, we adapt truncated backpropagation-through-time (TBPTT) to our multi-turn setting, learning cross-turn dependencies without full-history backpropagation. Extensive experiments on long-form dialogue benchmarks demonstrate superior performance and efficiency of C-DIC; notably, C-DIC shows stable inference latency and perplexity over hundreds of dialogue turns, supporting a scalable path to high-quality dialogue modeling.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2026

Large Models for Time Series and Spatio-Temporal Data: A Survey and Outlook

Temporal data, including time series and spatio-temporal data, are pervasive in real-world applications. Generated in massive volumes by physical and virtual sensors, they record dynamic system behaviors and enable a wide range of downstream tasks. Effectively analyzing such data is crucial to unlocking their rich information content. Recent advances in large language models and other foundation models have accelerated their use in time series and spatio-temporal data mining. These approaches not only improve pattern recognition and reasoning across diverse domains but also support progress toward artificial general intelligence that can understand and process temporal data. In this survey, we present a comprehensive, up-to-date review of large models tailored or adapted for time series and spatio-temporal data along four dimensions: data types, model categories, model scopes, and application areas/tasks. We organize existing work into two main groups: large models for time series analysis (LM4TS) and for spatio-temporal data mining (LM4STD), and further distinguish general-purpose from domain-specific models. We also curate related resources, including datasets, model implementations, and tools, organized by major application areas. Overall, this survey consolidates recent advances and highlights foundations, applications, resources, and open research opportunities in large model-centric temporal data analysis.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2026

CacheRAG: A Semantic Caching System for Retrieval-Augmented Generation in Knowledge Graph Question Answering

The integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has significantly advanced Knowledge Graph Question Answering (KGQA). However, existing LLM-driven KGQA systems act as stateless planners, generating retrieval plans in isolation without exploiting historical query patterns: analogous to a database system that optimizes every query from scratch without a plan cache. This fundamental design flaw leads to schema hallucinations and limited retrieval coverage. We propose CacheRAG, a systematic cache-augmented architecture for LLM-based KGQA that transforms stateless planners into continual learners. Unlike traditional database plan caching (which optimizes for frequency), CacheRAG introduces three novel design principles tailored for LLM contexts: (1) Schema-agnostic user interface: A two-stage semantic parsing framework via Intermediate Semantic Representation (ISR) enables non-expert users to interact purely in natural language, while a Backend Adapter grounds the LLM with local schema context to compile executable physical queries safely. (2) Diversity-optimized cache retrieval: A two-layer hierarchical index (Domain $\rightarrow$ Aspect) coupled with Maximal Marginal Relevance (MMR) maximizes structural variety in cached examples, effectively mitigating reasoning homogeneity. (3) Bounded heuristic expansion: Deterministic depth and breadth subgraph operators with strict complexity guarantees significantly enhance retrieval recall without risking unbounded API execution. Extensive experiments on multiple benchmarks demonstrate that CacheRAG significantly outperforms state-of-the-art baselines (e.g., +13.2% accuracy and +17.5% truthfulness on the CRAG dataset).

cs.DB↗

arXiv2026

From Rigid to Dynamic: Entropy-Guided Adaptive Inference for Long-Context LLMs

Existing sparse attention and KV cache compression methods for long-context LLM inference typically apply fixed sparsity patterns or uniform budgets across all attention heads, overlooking the substantial variation in attention behavior among heads and contexts. We observe two distinct entropy patterns among attention heads: Rigid Heads, whose entropy stays near zero across input segments, and Dynamic Heads, whose entropy fluctuates significantly. Crucially, the distribution of these types is context-dependent and cannot be predetermined offline. We therefore propose EntropyInfer, a training-free framework that uses attention entropy to adaptively allocate compute at the granularity of individual heads and segments during prefilling. For decoding, we introduce a latent KV cache compression scheme that leverages generated output tokens, rather than prefill tokens alone, to identify and retain the most critical cache entries. Extensive experiments on Llama, Qwen and openPangu model series show that EntropyInfer consistently outperforms baselines including SnapKV, AdaKV, and CritiPrefill, achieving up to 2.39$\times$ end-to-end speedup beyond 100k tokens with minimal quality degradation compared to full attention. The code is released in https://github.com/SHA-4096/EntropyInfer.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2026

QCFuse: Query-Aware Cache Fusion via Compressed View for Efficient RAG Serving

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) improves large language model (LLM) answer quality by grounding generation in external evidence, but processing retrieved contexts makes the prefill stage a dominant serving cost. RAG cache fusion reduces this cost by reusing precomputed key-value (KV) caches for retrieved chunks and selectively recomputing tokens under the current prompt. Existing selectors, however, face a dilemma between quality and efficiency: fast query-agnostic or final-layer query-to-context selectors can miss request-relevant evidence, whereas full-view query-aware selectors require broad context and layer visibility before recomputation and therefore stall the layer-wise cache-fusion pipeline. We present QCFuse, a compressed-view query-aware selector for RAG cache fusion. QCFuse uses chunk-anchor query probing to condition user-query states on compact per-chunk anchors and critical-layer profiling to identify recomputation tokens without all-layer inspection. We implement QCFuse in SGLang and evaluate it on four open-weight LLMs across six datasets. QCFuse reaches full-prefill-level quality. At matched quality, QCFuse achieves an average prefill-time speedup of 1.7x over full prefill and 1.5x over ProphetKV, the strongest quality-preserving baseline.

cs.AI↗