arXiv subjects

Saikat Mondal

Publications and source records attributed to Saikat Mondal.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2024

Pinned Ad-colloids Disfavors Nucleation in Colloidal Vapor Deposition

Crystallization through vapor deposition is ubiquitous, and is inevitably influenced by impurities, which often impact the local structure. Interestingly, the effect of immobilizing some of the depositing particles themselves, which would still preserve local structural symmetry, remains largely unexplored. Herein, we perform colloidal vapor deposition on a substrate with a few pinned ad-colloids, termed "mobility impurities". Through thermodynamic and kinematic measurements, we demonstrate that these pinned ad-colloids, even though they share identical geometry and interaction with depositing particles, are disfavored as nucleation centers. We reveal that entropic contributions, rather than energetic ones, govern nucleation physics in the presence of mobility impurities. Moreover, tuning the mobility of colloids on the substrate adjusts the nucleation likelihood at pinned sites. In later stages of growth, pinning induces mode localization and alters the thin film's vibrational spectrum. Our work, thus, underscores the potential of strategically incorporating mobility impurities to engineer material properties.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2024

Why Do Developers Engage with ChatGPT in Issue-Tracker? Investigating Usage and Reliance on ChatGPT-Generated Code

Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have shown the potential to assist developers with coding and debugging tasks. However, their role in collaborative issue resolution is underexplored. In this study, we analyzed 1,152 Developer-ChatGPT conversations across 1,012 issues in GitHub to examine the diverse usage of ChatGPT and reliance on its generated code. Our contributions are fourfold. First, we manually analyzed 289 conversations to understand ChatGPT's usage in the GitHub Issues. Our analysis revealed that ChatGPT is primarily utilized for ideation, whereas its usage for validation (e.g., code documentation accuracy) is minimal. Second, we applied BERTopic modeling to identify key areas of engagement on the entire dataset. We found that backend issues (e.g., API management) dominate conversations, while testing is surprisingly less covered. Third, we utilized the CPD clone detection tool to check if the code generated by ChatGPT was used to address issues. Our findings revealed that ChatGPT-generated code was used as-is to resolve only 5.83\% of the issues. Fourth, we estimated sentiment using a RoBERTa-based sentiment analysis model to determine developers' satisfaction with different usages and engagement areas. We found positive sentiment (i.e., high satisfaction) about using ChatGPT for refactoring and addressing data analytics (e.g., categorizing table data) issues. On the contrary, we observed negative sentiment when using ChatGPT to debug issues and address automation tasks (e.g., GUI interactions). Our findings show the unmet needs and growing dissatisfaction among developers. Researchers and ChatGPT developers should focus on developing task-specific solutions that help resolve diverse issues, improving user satisfaction and problem-solving efficiency in software development.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2024

Carroll in Shallow Water

We discover a surprising connection between Carrollian symmetries and hydrodynamics in the shallow water approximation. Carrollian symmetries arise in the speed of light going to zero limit of relativistic Poincaré symmetries. Using a recent gauge theoretic description of shallow water wave equations we find that the actions corresponding to two different waves, viz. the so called flat band solution and the Poincaré waves map exactly to the actions of the electric and magnetic sectors of Carrollian electrodynamics.

hep-th↗

arXiv2024

AUTOGENICS: Automated Generation of Context-Aware Inline Comments for Code Snippets on Programming Q&A Sites Using LLM

Inline comments in the source code facilitate easy comprehension, reusability, and enhanced readability. However, code snippets in answers on Q&A sites like Stack Overflow (SO) often lack comments because answerers volunteer their time and often skip comments or explanations due to time constraints. Existing studies show that these online code examples are difficult to read and understand, making it difficult for developers (especially novices) to use them correctly and leading to misuse. Given these challenges, we introduced AUTOGENICS, a tool designed to integrate with SO to generate effective inline comments for code snippets in SO answers exploiting large language models (LLMs). Our contributions are threefold. First, we randomly select 400 answer code snippets from SO and generate inline comments for them using LLMs. We then manually evaluate these comments' effectiveness using four key metrics: accuracy, adequacy, conciseness, and usefulness. Overall, LLMs demonstrate promising effectiveness in generating inline comments for SO answer code snippets. Second, we surveyed 14 active SO users to perceive the effectiveness of these inline comments. The survey results are consistent with our previous manual evaluation. However, according to our evaluation, LLMs-generated comments are less effective for shorter code snippets and sometimes produce noisy comments. Third, to address the gaps, we introduced AUTOGENICS, which extracts additional context from question texts and generates context-aware inline comments. It also optimizes comments by removing noise (e.g., comments in import statements and variable declarations). We evaluate the effectiveness of AUTOGENICS-generated comments using the same four metrics that outperform those of standard LLMs. AUTOGENICS might (a) enhance code comprehension, (b) save time, and improve developers' ability to learn and reuse code more accurately.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2024

Reproducibility of Issues Reported in Stack Overflow Questions: Challenges, Impact & Estimation

Software developers often submit questions to technical Q&A sites like Stack Overflow (SO) to resolve code-level problems. In practice, they include example code snippets with questions to explain the programming issues. Existing research suggests that users attempt to reproduce the reported issues using given code snippets when answering questions. Unfortunately, such code snippets could not always reproduce the issues due to several unmet challenges that prevent questions from receiving appropriate and prompt solutions. One previous study investigated reproducibility challenges and produced a catalog. However, how the practitioners perceive this challenge catalog is unknown. Practitioners' perspectives are inevitable in validating these challenges and estimating their severity. This study first surveyed 53 practitioners to understand their perspectives on reproducibility challenges. We attempt to (a) see whether they agree with these challenges, (b) determine the impact of each challenge on answering questions, and (c) identify the need for tools to promote reproducibility. Survey results show that - (a) about 90% of the participants agree with the challenges, (b) "missing an important part of code" most severely hurt reproducibility, and (c) participants strongly recommend introducing automated tool support to promote reproducibility. Second, we extract \emph{nine} code-based features (e.g., LOC, compilability) and build five Machine Learning (ML) models to predict issue reproducibility. Early detection might help users improve code snippets and their reproducibility. Our models achieve 84.5% precision, 83.0% recall, 82.8% F1-score, and 82.8% overall accuracy, which are highly promising. Third, we systematically interpret the ML model and explain how code snippets with reproducible issues differ from those with irreproducible issues.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2024

Disconnected entanglement entropy as a marker of edge modes in a periodically driven Kitaev chain

We study the disconnected entanglement entropy (DEE) of a Kitaev chain in which the chemical potential is periodically modulated with $δ$-function pulses within the framework of Floquet theory. For this driving protocol, the DEE of a sufficiently large system with open boundary conditions turns out to be integer-quantized, with the integer being equal to the number of Majorana edge modes localized at each edge of the chain generated by the periodic driving, thereby establishing the DEE as a marker for detecting Floquet Majorana edge modes. Analysing the DEE, we further show that these Majorana edge modes are robust against weak spatial disorder and temporal noise. Interestingly, we find that the DEE may, in some cases, also detect the anomalous edge modes which can be generated by periodic driving of the nearest-neighbor hopping, even though such modes have no topological significance and not robust against spatial disorder. We also probe the behaviour of the DEE for a kicked Ising chain in the presence of an integrability breaking interaction which has been experimentally realized.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2024

Signatures of quantum phases in a dissipative system

Lindbladian formalism, as tuned to dissipative and open systems, has been all-pervasive to interpret non-equilibrium steady states of quantum many-body systems. We study the fate of free fermionic and superconducting phases in a dissipative one-dimensional Kitaev model - where the bath acts both as a source and a sink of fermionic particles with different coupling rates. As a function of these two couplings, we investigate the steady state, its entanglement content, and its approach from varying initial states. Interestingly, we find that the steady state phase diagram retains decipherable signatures of ground state critical physics. We also show that early-time fidelity is a useful marker to find a subclass of phase transitions in such situations. Moreover, we show that the survival of critical signatures at late-times, strongly depend on the thermal nature of the steady state. This connection hints at a correspondence between quantum observables and classical magnetism in the steady state of such systems. Our work uncovers interesting connections between dissipative quantum many-body systems, thermalization of a classical spin and many-body quantum critical phenomena.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2024

Enhancing User Interaction in ChatGPT: Characterizing and Consolidating Multiple Prompts for Issue Resolution

Prompt design plays a crucial role in shaping the efficacy of ChatGPT, influencing the model's ability to extract contextually accurate responses. Thus, optimal prompt construction is essential for maximizing the utility and performance of ChatGPT. However, sub-optimal prompt design may necessitate iterative refinement, as imprecise or ambiguous instructions can lead to undesired responses from ChatGPT. Existing studies explore several prompt patterns and strategies to improve the relevance of responses generated by ChatGPT. However, the exploration of constraints that necessitate the submission of multiple prompts is still an unmet attempt. In this study, our contributions are twofold. First, we attempt to uncover gaps in prompt design that demand multiple iterations. In particular, we manually analyze 686 prompts that were submitted to resolve issues related to Java and Python programming languages and identify eleven prompt design gaps (e.g., missing specifications). Such gap exploration can enhance the efficacy of single prompts in ChatGPT. Second, we attempt to reproduce the ChatGPT response by consolidating multiple prompts into a single one. We can completely consolidate prompts with four gaps (e.g., missing context) and partially consolidate prompts with three gaps (e.g., additional functionality). Such an effort provides concrete evidence to users to design more optimal prompts mitigating these gaps. Our study findings and evidence can - (a) save users time, (b) reduce costs, and (c) increase user satisfaction.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2024

Can We Identify Stack Overflow Questions Requiring Code Snippets? Investigating the Cause & Effect of Missing Code Snippets

On the Stack Overflow (SO) Q&A site, users often request solutions to their code-related problems (e.g., errors, unexpected behavior). Unfortunately, they often miss required code snippets during their question submission, which could prevent their questions from getting prompt and appropriate answers. In this study, we conduct an empirical study investigating the cause & effect of missing code snippets in SO questions whenever required. Here, our contributions are threefold. First, we analyze how the presence or absence of required code snippets affects the correlation between question types (missed code, included code after requests & had code snippets during submission) and corresponding answer meta-data (e.g., presence of an accepted answer). According to our analysis, the chance of getting accepted answers is three times higher for questions that include required code snippets during their question submission than those that missed the code. We also investigate whether the confounding factors (e.g., user reputation) affect questions receiving answers besides the presence or absence of required code snippets. We found that such factors do not hurt the correlation between the presence or absence of required code snippets and answer meta-data. Second, we surveyed 64 practitioners to understand why users miss necessary code snippets. About 60% of them agree that users are unaware of whether their questions require any code snippets. Third, we thus extract four text-based features (e.g., keywords) and build six ML models to identify the questions that need code snippets. Our models can predict the target questions with 86.5% precision, 90.8% recall, 85.3% F1-score, and 85.2% overall accuracy. Our work has the potential to save significant time in programming question-answering and improve the quality of the valuable knowledge base by decreasing unanswered and unresolved questions.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2024

Investigating the Utility of ChatGPT in the Issue Tracking System: An Exploratory Study

Issue tracking systems serve as the primary tool for incorporating external users and customizing a software project to meet the users' requirements. However, the limited number of contributors and the challenge of identifying the best approach for each issue often impede effective resolution. Recently, an increasing number of developers are turning to AI tools like ChatGPT to enhance problem-solving efficiency. While previous studies have demonstrated the potential of ChatGPT in areas such as automatic program repair, debugging, and code generation, there is a lack of study on how developers explicitly utilize ChatGPT to resolve issues in their tracking system. Hence, this study aims to examine the interaction between ChatGPT and developers to analyze their prevalent activities and provide a resolution. In addition, we assess the code reliability by confirming if the code produced by ChatGPT was integrated into the project's codebase using the clone detection tool NiCad. Our investigation reveals that developers mainly use ChatGPT for brainstorming solutions but often opt to write their code instead of using ChatGPT-generated code, possibly due to concerns over the generation of "hallucinated code", as highlighted in the literature.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2024

Beyond Wilson? Carroll from current deformations

At extreme energies, both low and high, the spacetime symmetries of relativistic quantum field theories (QFTs) are expected to change with Galilean symmetries emerging in the very low energy domain and, as we will argue, Carrollian symmetries appearing at very high energies. The formulation of Wilsonian renormalisation group seems inadequate for handling these changes of the underlying Poincare symmetry of QFTs and it seems unlikely that these drastic changes can be seen within the realms of relativistic QFT. We show that contrary to this expectation, changes in the spacetime algebra occurs at the very edges of parameter space. In particular, we focus on the very high energy sector and show how bilinears of $U(1)$ currents added to a two dimensional (massless) scalar field theory deform the relativistic spacetime conformal algebra to conformal Carroll as the effective coupling of the deformation is dialed to infinity. We demonstrate this using both a symmetric and an antisymmetric current-current deformation for theories with multiple scalar fields. These two operators generate distinct kinds of quantum flows in the coupling space, the symmetric driven by Bogoliubov transformations and the antisymmetric by spectral flows, both leading to Carrollian CFTs at the end of the flow.

hep-th↗

arXiv2023

Percolation Transition in a Topological Phase

Transition out of a topological phase is typically characterized by discontinuous changes in topological invariants along with bulk gap closings. However, as a clean system is geometrically punctured, it is natural to ask the fate of an underlying topological phase. To understand this physics we introduce and study both short and long-ranged toy models where a one dimensional topological phase is subjected to bond percolation protocols. We find that non-trivial boundary phenomena follow competing energy scales even while global topological response is governed via geometrical properties of the percolated lattice. Using numerical, analytical and appropriate mean-field studies we uncover the rich phenomenology and the various cross-over regimes of these systems. In particular, we discuss emergence of "fractured topological region" where an overall trivial system contains macroscopic number of topological clusters. Our study shows the interesting physics that can arise from an interplay of geometrical disorder within a topological phase.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2023

Investigating Technology Usage Span by Analyzing Users' Q&A Traces in Stack Overflow

Choosing an appropriate software development technology (e.g., programming language) is challenging due to the proliferation of diverse options. The selection of inappropriate technologies for development may have a far-reaching effect on software developers' career growth. Switching to a different technology after working with one may lead to a complex learning curve and, thus, be more challenging. Therefore, it is crucial for software developers to find technologies that have a high usage span. Intuitively, the usage span of a technology can be determined by the time span developers have used that technology. Existing literature focuses on the technology landscape to explore the complex and implicit dependencies among technologies but lacks formal studies to draw insights about their usage span. This paper investigates the technology usage span by analyzing the question and answering (Q&A) traces of Stack Overflow (SO), the largest technical Q&A website available to date. In particular, we analyze 6.7 million Q&A traces posted by about 97K active SO users and see what technologies have appeared in their questions or answers over 15 years. According to our analysis, C# and Java programming languages have a high usage span, followed by JavaScript. Besides, developers used the .NET framework, iOS & Windows Operating Systems (OS), and SQL query language for a long time (on average). Our study also exposes the emerging (i.e., newly growing) technologies. For example, usages of technologies such as SwiftUI, .NET-6.0, Visual Studio 2022, and Blazor WebAssembly framework are increasing. The findings from our study can assist novice developers, startup software industries, and software users in determining appropriate technologies. This also establishes an initial benchmark for future investigation on the use span of software technologies.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2023

BMS modular covariance and structure constants

Two-dimensional (2d) field theories invariant under the Bondi-Metzner-Sachs algebra, or 2d BMSFTs in short, are putative holographic duals of Einstein gravity in 3d asymptotically flat spacetimes. When defined on a torus, these field theories come equipped with a modified modular structure. We use the modular covariance of the BMS torus two-point function to develop formulae for different three-point structure constants of the field theory. These structure constants indicate that BMSFTs follow the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis, albeit with some interesting changes to usual 2d CFTs. The singularity structures of the structure constants contain information on perturbations of cosmological horizons in 3d asymptotically flat spacetimes, which we show can also be obtained as a limit of BTZ quasinormal modes.

hep-th↗

arXiv2023

Do Subjectivity and Objectivity Always Agree? A Case Study with Stack Overflow Questions

In Stack Overflow (SO), the quality of posts (i.e., questions and answers) is subjectively evaluated by users through a voting mechanism. The net votes (upvotes - downvotes) obtained by a post are often considered an approximation of its quality. However, about half of the questions that received working solutions got more downvotes than upvotes. Furthermore, about 18% of the accepted answers (i.e., verified solutions) also do not score the maximum votes. All these counter-intuitive findings cast doubts on the reliability of the evaluation mechanism employed at SO. Moreover, many users raise concerns against the evaluation, especially downvotes to their posts. Therefore, rigorous verification of the subjective evaluation is highly warranted to ensure a non-biased and reliable quality assessment mechanism. In this paper, we compare the subjective assessment of questions with their objective assessment using 2.5 million questions and ten text analysis metrics. According to our investigation, four objective metrics agree with the subjective evaluation, two do not agree, one either agrees or disagrees, and the remaining three neither agree nor disagree with the subjective evaluation. We then develop machine learning models to classify the promoted and discouraged questions. Our models outperform the state-of-the-art models with a maximum of about 76% - 87% accuracy.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2022

Magic Fermions: Carroll and Flat Bands

The Carroll algebra is constructed as the $c\to0$ limit of the Poincare algebra and is associated to symmetries on generic null surfaces. In this paper, we begin investigations of Carrollian fermions or fermions defined on generic null surfaces. Due to the availability of two different (degenerate) metrics on Carroll spacetimes, there is the possibility of two different versions of Carroll Clifford algebras. We consider both possibilities and construct explicit representations of Carrollian gamma matrices and show how to build higher spacetime dimensional representations out of lower ones. Actions for Carroll fermions are constructed with these gamma matrices and the properties of these actions are investigated. We show that in condensed matter systems where the dispersion relation becomes trivial i.e. the energy is not dependent on momentum and bands flatten out, Carroll symmetry generically appears. We give explicit examples of this including that of twisted bi-layer graphene, where superconductivity appears at so called magic angles and connect this to Carroll fermions.

hep-th↗

arXiv2022

Carroll fermions in two dimensions

Carroll symmetry is a very powerful characteristic of generic null surfaces, as it replaces the usual Poincaré algebra with a vanishing speed of light version thereof. These symmetries have found universal applications in the physics of null manifolds as they arise in diverse situations ranging from black hole horizons to condensed matter systems with vanishing Fermi velocities. In this work, we concentrate on fermions living on two dimensional ($2d$) null manifolds and explore the Carroll invariant structure of the associated field theories in a systematic manner. The free massless versions of these fermions are shown to exhibit $2d$ Conformal Carroll or equivalently the $3d$ Bondi-Metzner-Sachs (BMS) algebra as their symmetry. Due to the degenerate nature of the manifold, we show the presence of two distinct classes of Clifford Algebras. We also find that in two dimensions there are two distinct fermion actions. We study discrete and continuous symmetries of both theories, and quantize them using highest weight representation of the vacuum. We also discuss how the symmetries of $2d$ free fermion CFTs can be continually deformed by infinite boosts or degenerate linear transformations on coordinates, leading to the corresponding BMS invariant theory at singular points.

hep-th↗

arXiv2022

Asymmetric rotations and dimerization driven by normal to modulated phase transition in 4-biphenylcarboxy coupled L-phenylalaninate

Amongst the derivatives of 4-biphenylcarboxylic acid and amino acid esters, the crystal structure of 4-biphenylcarboxy-(L)-phenylalaninate is unusual owing to its monoclinic symmetry within a pseudo-orthorhombic lattice. The distortion is described by disparate rotational property around the chiral centers ($φ_{\mathrm{chiral}}$ $\simeq$ -129 degrees and 58 degrees) of the two molecules in the asymmetric unit. Each of these molecules comprise of planar biphenyl moieties ($φ_{\mathrm{biphenyl}}$ = 0 degrees). Using temperature dependent single crystal X-ray diffraction experiments we show that the compound undergoes a phase transition below $T$ $\sim$ 124 K that is characterized by a commensurate modulation wave vector, $\mathbf{q}$ = $δ(101)$, $δ$ = $\frac{1}{2}$. The (3+1) dimensional modulated structure at $T$ = 100 K suggests that the phase transition drives the biphenyl moieties towards non coplanar conformations with significant variation of internal torsion ($φ^{\mathrm{max}}_{\mathrm{biphenyl}}$ $\leq$ $20$ degrees). These intramolecular rotations lead to dimerization of the molecular stacks that are described predominantly by intermolecular tilts and small variations in intermolecular distances. Atypical of modulated structures and superstructures of biphenyl and other polyphenyls, the rotations of individual molecules are asymmetric ($Δ$$φ_{\mathrm{biphenyl}}$ $\approx$ 5 degrees) while $φ_{\mathrm{biphenyl}}$ of one independent molecule is two to four times larger than the other. Crystal-chemical analysis and phase relations in superspace suggest multiple competing factors involving intramolecular steric factors, intermolecular H--C${\cdot}{\cdot}{\cdot}$C--H contacts and weak C--H${\cdot}{\cdot}{\cdot}$O hydrogen bonds that govern the distinctively unequal torsional property of the molecules.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗