arXiv subjects

Tao Liu

Publications and source records attributed to Tao Liu.

At least 289 records · Page 16Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

A Review of Landcover Classification with Very-High Resolution Remotely Sensed Optical Images-Analysis Unit,Model Scalability and Transferability

As an important application in remote sensing, landcover classification remains one of the most challenging tasks in very-high-resolution (VHR) image analysis. As the rapidly increasing number of Deep Learning (DL) based landcover methods and training strategies are claimed to be the state-of-the-art, the already fragmented technical landscape of landcover mapping methods has been further complicated. Although there exists a plethora of literature review work attempting to guide researchers in making an informed choice of landcover mapping methods, the articles either focus on the review of applications in a specific area or revolve around general deep learning models, which lack a systematic view of the ever advancing landcover mapping methods. In addition, issues related to training samples and model transferability have become more critical than ever in an era dominated by data-driven approaches, but these issues were addressed to a lesser extent in previous review articles regarding remote sensing classification. Therefore, in this paper, we present a systematic overview of existing methods by starting from learning methods and varying basic analysis units for landcover mapping tasks, to challenges and solutions on three aspects of scalability and transferability with a remote sensing classification focus including (1) sparsity and imbalance of data; (2) domain gaps across different geographical regions; and (3) multi-source and multi-view fusion. We discuss in detail each of these categorical methods and draw concluding remarks in these developments and recommend potential directions for the continued endeavor.

eess.IV↗

arXiv2022

Energy Harvesting Aware Multi-hop Routing Policy in Distributed IoT System Based on Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning

Energy harvesting technologies offer a promising solution to sustainably power an ever-growing number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. However, due to the weak and transient natures of energy harvesting, IoT devices have to work intermittently rendering conventional routing policies and energy allocation strategies impractical. To this end, this paper, for the very first time, developed a distributed multi-agent reinforcement algorithm known as global actor-critic policy (GAP) to address the problem of routing policy and energy allocation together for the energy harvesting powered IoT system. At the training stage, each IoT device is treated as an agent and one universal model is trained for all agents to save computing resources. At the inference stage, packet delivery rate can be maximized. The experimental results show that the proposed GAP algorithm achieves around 1.28 times and 1.24 times data transmission rate than that of the Q-table and ESDSRAA algorithm, respectively.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2022

Policy Optimization for Constrained MDPs with Provable Fast Global Convergence

We address the problem of finding the optimal policy of a constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) using a gradient descent-based algorithm. Previous results have shown that a primal-dual approach can achieve an $\mathcal{O}(1/\sqrt{T})$ global convergence rate for both the optimality gap and the constraint violation. We propose a new algorithm called policy mirror descent-primal dual (PMD-PD) algorithm that can provably achieve a faster $\mathcal{O}(\log(T)/T)$ convergence rate for both the optimality gap and the constraint violation. For the primal (policy) update, the PMD-PD algorithm utilizes a modified value function and performs natural policy gradient steps, which is equivalent to a mirror descent step with appropriate regularization. For the dual update, the PMD-PD algorithm uses modified Lagrange multipliers to ensure a faster convergence rate. We also present two extensions of this approach to the settings with zero constraint violation and sample-based estimation. Experimental results demonstrate the faster convergence rate and the better performance of the PMD-PD algorithm compared with existing policy gradient-based algorithms.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2022

Network resilience in the aging brain

Degeneration and adaptation are two competing sides of the same coin called resilience in the progressive processes of brain aging or diseases. Degeneration accumulates during brain aging and other cerebral activities, causing structural atrophy and dysfunction. At the same time, adaptation allows brain network reorganize to compensate for structural loss to maintain cognition function. Although hidden resilience mechanism is critical and fundamental to uncover the brain aging law, due to the lack of datasets and appropriate methodology, it remains essentially unknown how these two processes interact dynamically across brain networks. To quantitatively investigate this complex process, we analyze aging brains based on 6-year follow-up multimodal neuroimaging database from 63 persons. We reveal the critical mechanism of network resilience that various perturbation may cause fast brain structural atrophy, and then brain can reorganize its functional layout to lower its operational efficiency, which helps to slow down the structural atrophy and finally recover its functional efficiency equilibrium. This empirical finding could be explained by our theoretical model, suggesting one universal resilience dynamical function. This resilience is achieved in the brain functional network with evolving percolation and rich-club features. Our findings can help to understand the brain aging process and design possible mitigation methods to adjust interaction between degeneration and adaptation from resilience viewpoint.

q-bio.NC↗

arXiv2022

A proof-of-principle demonstration of quantum microwave photonics

With the rapid development of microwave photonics, which has expanded to numerous applications of commercial importance, eliminating the emerging bottlenecks becomes of vital importance. For example, as the main branch of microwave photonics, radio-over-fiber technology provides high bandwidth, low-loss, and long-distance propagation capability, facilitating wide applications ranging from telecommunication to wireless networks. With ultrashort pulses as the optical carrier, huge capacity is further endowed. However, the wide bandwidth of ultrashort pulses results in the severe vulnerability of high-frequency RF signals to fiber dispersion. With a time-energy entangled biphoton source as the optical carrier and combined with the single-photon detection technique, a quantum microwave photonics method is proposed and demonstrated experimentally. The results show that it not only realizes unprecedented nonlocal RF signal modulation with strong resistance to the dispersion associated with ultrashort pulse carriers but provides an alternative mechanism to effectively distill the RF signal out from the dispersion. Furthermore, the spurious-free dynamic range of both the nonlocally modulated and distilled RF signals has been significantly improved. With the ultra-weak detection and high-speed processing advantages endowed by the low-timing-jitter single-photon detection, the quantum microwave photonics method opens up new possibilities in modern communication and networks.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Implementation of field two-way quantum synchronization of distant clocks across a 7 km deployed fiber link

The two-way quantum clock synchronization has been shown not only providing femtosecond-level synchronization capability but also security against symmetric delay attacks, thus becoming a prospective method to compare and synchronize distant clocks with both enhanced precision and security. In this letter, a field test of two-way quantum synchronization between a H-maser and a Rb clock linked by a 7 km-long deployed fiber was implemented. Limited by the frequency stability of the Rb clock, the achieved time stability at 30 s was measured as 32 ps. By applying a fiber-optic microwave frequency transfer technology, the stability was improved by more than one-magnitude to 1.9 ps, even though the number of acquired photon pairs was only 1440 in 30 s due to the low sampling rate of the utilized coincidence measurement system. Such implementation demonstrates the high practicability of two-way quantum clock synchronization method for promoting the field applications.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Higher-Order Weyl-Exceptional-Ring Semimetals

For first-order topological semimetals, non-Hermitian perturbations can drive the Weyl nodes into Weyl exceptional rings having multiple topological structures and no Hermitian counterparts. Recently, it was discovered that higher-order Weyl semimetals, as a novel class of higher-order topological phases, can uniquely exhibit coexisting surface and hinge Fermi arcs. However, non-Hermitian higher-order topological semimetals have not yet been explored. Here, we identify a new type of topological semimetals, i.e, a higher-order topological semimetal with Weyl exceptional rings. In such a semimetal, these rings are characterized by both a spectral winding number and a Chern number. Moreover, the higher-order Weyl-exceptional-ring semimetal supports both surface and hinge Fermi-arc states, which are bounded by the projection of the Weyl exceptional rings onto the surface and hinge, respectively. Noticeably, the dissipative terms can cause the coupling of two exceptional rings with opposite topological charges, so as to induce topological phase transitions. Our studies open new avenues for exploring novel higher-order topological semimetals in non-Hermitian systems.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2021

Decay of streaks and rolls in plane Couette-Poiseuille flow

We report the results of an experimental investigation into the decay of turbulence in plane Couette-Poiseuille flow using 'quench' experiments where the flow laminarises after a sudden reduction in Reynolds number $Re$. Specifically, we study the velocity field in the streamwise-spanwise plane. We show that the spanwise velocity containing rolls, decays faster than the streamwise velocity, which displays elongated regions of higher or lower velocity called streaks. At final Reynolds numbers above 425, the decay of streaks displays two stages: first a slow decay when rolls are present and secondly a more rapid decay of streaks alone. The difference in behaviour results from the regeneration of streaks by rolls, called the lift-up effect. We define the turbulent fraction as the portion of the flow containing turbulence and this is estimated by thresholding the spanwise velocity component. It decreases linearly with time in the whole range of final $Re$. The corresponding decay slope increases linearly with final $Re$. The extrapolated value at which this decay slope vanishes is $Re_{a_z}\approx 656\pm10$, close to $Re_g\approx 670$ at which turbulence is self-sustained. The decay of the energy computed from the spanwise velocity component is found to be exponential. The corresponding decay rate increases linearly with $Re$, with an extrapolated vanishing value at $Re_{A_z}\approx 688\pm10$. This value is also close to the value at which the turbulence is self-sustained, showing that valuable information on the transition can be obtained over a wide range of $Re$.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2021

Higgs Boson Production and Quark Scattering Amplitudes at High Energy through the Next-to-Next-to-Leading Power in Quark Mass

We study the amplitudes of the quark scattering by an external electromagnetic field and of the light quark mediated Higgs boson production via gluon fusion in the high-energy limit. The asymptotic behavior of the quark form factors is obtained in the double-logarithmic approximation to all orders in strong coupling constant through ${\cal O}(m_q^3)$ in the small quark mass expansion and the asymptotic formula is given in a closed analytic form. In the case of the two-gluon Higgs boson form factor we obtain a complete analytic result for the three-loop ${\cal O}(m_q^3)$ double-logarithmic term while the all-order analysis is performed in the large-$N_c$ limit of QCD and for the abelian gauge group. An estimate of the high-order high-power light quark mass effect in the Higgs boson production and decay is given.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Demonstration of 50 km Fiber-optic two-way quantum time transfer at femtosecond-scale precision

The two-way quantum time transfer method has been proposed and experimentally demonstrated for its potential enhancements in precision and better guarantee of security. To further testify its advantage in practical applications, the applicable direct transmission distance as well as the achievable synchronization precision between independent time scales is of great interest. In this paper, an experiment on two-way quantum time transfer has been carried out over a 50 km long fiber link. With the common clock reference, a short-term stability of 2.6 ps at an averaging time of 7 s and a long-term stability of 54.6 fs at 57300 s were obtained. With independent clock references, assisted by microwave frequency transfer technology, the achieved synchronization showed almost equal performance and reached a stability of 89.5 fs at 57300 s. Furthermore, the spectral consistency of the utilized entangled photon pair sources has been studied concerning its effect on the transfer accuracy and long-term stability. The results obtained have promised a bright future of the two-way quantum time transfer for realizing high-precision time synchronization on metropolitan area fiber links.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Fast Block Linear System Solver Using Q-Learning Schduling for Unified Dynamic Power System Simulations

We present a fast block direct solver for the unified dynamic simulations of power systems. This solver uses a novel Q-learning based method for task scheduling. Unified dynamic simulations of power systems represent a method in which the electric-mechanical transient, medium-term and long-term dynamic phenomena are organically united. Due to the high rank and large numbers in solving, fast solution of these equations is the key to speeding up the simulation. The sparse systems of simulation contain complex nested block structure, which could be used by the solver to speed up. For the scheduling of blocks and frontals in the solver, we use a learning based task-tree scheduling technique in the framework of Markov Decision Process. That is, we could learn optimal scheduling strategies by offline training on many sample matrices. Then for any systems, the solver would get optimal task partition and scheduling on the learned model. Our learning-based algorithm could help improve the performance of sparse solver, which has been verified in some numerical experiments. The simulation on some large power systems shows that our solver is 2-6 times faster than KLU, which is the state-of-the-art sparse solver for circuit simulation problems.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2021

A Biologically Plausible Learning Rule for Perceptual Systems of organisms that Maximize Mutual Information

It is widely believed that the perceptual system of an organism is optimized for the properties of the environment to which it is exposed. A specific instance of this principle known as the Infomax principle holds that the purpose of early perceptual processing is to maximize the mutual information between the neural coding and the incoming sensory signal. In this article, we present a method to implement this principle accurately with a local, spike-based, and continuous-time learning rule.

cs.NE↗

arXiv2021

Cyber-Physical Taint Analysis in Multi-stage Manufacturing Systems (MMS): A Case Study

Information flows are intrinsic properties of an multi-stage manufacturing systems (MMS). In computer security, a basic information flow tracking technique is dynamic taint analysis (DTA). DTA tracks taint propagation from one data variable (e.g., a buffer holding a HTTP request) to another. Taint propagation paths are typically determined by data flows and implicit flows in a computer program. And the union of all the taint propagation paths forms a taint graph. It is clear that taints graphs could significantly enhance intrusion diagnosis. However, the existing DTA techniques cannot be directly used in an MMS, and a main reason is as follows: Without manufacturing-specific taint propagation rules, DTA cannot be implemented. In this work, we conduct a case study which (a) extends the existing DTA method with manufacturing-specific taint propagation rules, and (b) applies the extended method to perform preliminary intrusion diagnosis with a small-scale test-bed.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2021

Finding Taint-Style Vulnerabilities in Linux-based Embedded Firmware with SSE-based Alias Analysis

Although the importance of using static analysis to detect taint-style vulnerabilities in Linux-based embedded firmware is widely recognized, existing approaches are plagued by three major limitations. (a) Approaches based on symbolic execution may miss alias information and therefore suffer from a high false-negative rate. (b) Approaches based on VSA (value set analysis) often provide an over-approximate pointer range. As a result, many false positives could be produced. (c) Existing work for detecting taint-style vulnerability does not consider indirect call resolution, whereas indirect calls are frequently used in Internet-facing embedded devices. As a result, many false negatives could be produced. In this work, we propose a precise demand-driven flow-, context- and field-sensitive alias analysis approach. Based on this new approach, we also design a novel indirect call resolution scheme. Combined with sanitization rule checking, our solution discovers taint-style vulnerabilities by static taint analysis. We implemented our idea with a prototype called EmTaint and evaluated it against 35 real-world embedded firmware samples from six popular vendors. EmTaint discovered at least 192 bugs, including 41 n-day bugs and 151 0-day bugs. At least 115 CVE/PSV numbers have been allocated from a subset of the reported vulnerabilities at the time of writing. Compared to state-of-the-art tools such as KARONTE and SaTC, EmTaint found significantly more bugs on the same dataset in less time.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2021

Augmented Synchronization of Power Systems

Power system transient stability has been translated into a Lyapunov stability problem of the post-disturbance equilibrium for decades. Despite substantial results, conventional theories suffer from the stringent requirement of knowing the post-disturbance equilibrium a priori. In contrast, the wisdom from practice, which certificates stability by only the observation of converging frequencies and voltages, seems to provide an equilibrium-independent approach. Here, we formulate the empirical wisdom by the concept of augmented synchronization and aim to bridge such a theory-practice gap. First, we derive conditions under which the convergence to augmented synchronization implies the convergence to the equilibrium set, laying the first theoretical foundation for the empirical wisdom. Then, we reveal from what initial values the power system can achieve augmented synchronization. Our results open the possibility of an equilibrium-independent power system stability analytic that re-defines the nominal motion as augmented synchronization rather than certain equilibrium. Single-machine examples and the IEEE 9-bus system well verify our results and illustrate promising implications.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2021

Multipartite entanglement of the topologically ordered state in a perturbed toric code

We demonstrate that multipartite entanglement, witnessed by the quantum Fisher information (QFI), can characterize topological quantum phase transitions in the spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ toric code model on a square lattice with external fields. We show that the QFI density of the ground state can be written in terms of the expectation values of gauge-invariant Wilson loops for different sizes of square regions and identify $\mathbb{Z}_2$ topological order by its scaling behavior. Furthermore, we use this multipartite entanglement witness to investigate thermalization and disorder-assisted stabilization of topological order after a quantum quench. Moreover, with an upper bound of the QFI, we demonstrate the absence of finite-temperature topological order in the 2D toric code model in the thermodynamic limit. Our results provide insights to topological phases, which are robust against external disturbances, and are candidates for topologically protected quantum computation.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Axi-Higgs Cosmology

If the electroweak Higgs vacuum expectation value $v$ in early universe is $\sim 1 \%$ higher than its present value $v_0=246$ GeV, the $^7$Li puzzle in BBN and the CMB/$Λ$CDM tension with late-universe measurements on Hubble parameter are mitigated. We propose a model of an axion coupled to the Higgs field, named ``axi-Higgs'', with its mass $m_a \sim 10^{-30} - 10^{-29}\,{\rm eV}$ and decay constant $f_a \sim 10^{17} - 10^{18}\,{\rm GeV}$, to achieve this goal. The axion initial value $a_{\rm ini}$ yields an initial $Δv_{\rm ini}/v_0 \sim 0.01$ throughout the BBN-recombination epoch and a percent level contribution to the total matter density today. Because of its very large de Broglie wavelength, this axion matter density $ω_a$ suppresses the matter power spectrum, alleviating the CMB/$Λ$CDM $S_8/σ_8$ tension with the weak-lensing data. It also explains the recently reported isotropic cosmic birefringence by its coupling with photons. Adding the axion ($m \sim 10^{-22}\,$eV) in the fuzzy dark matter model to the axi-Higgs model allows bigger $Δv_{\rm rec}$ and $ω_a$ to address the Hubble and $S_8/σ_8$ tensions simultaneously. The model predicts that $Δv$ may be detected by the spectral measurements of quasars, while its oscillation may be observed in the atomic clock measurements.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Observation of Square-Root Higher-Order Topological States in Photonic Waveguide Arrays

Recently, high-order topological insulators (HOTIs), accompanied by topologically nontrivial boundary states with codimension larger than one, have been extensively explored because of unconventional bulk-boundary correspondences. As a novel type of HOTIs, very recent works have explored the square-root HOTIs, where the topological nontrivial nature of bulk bands stems from the square of the Hamiltonian. In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate 2D square-root HOTIs in photonic waveguide arrays written in glass using femtosecond laser direct-write techniques. Edge and corner states are clearly observed through visible light spectra. The dynamical evolutions of topological boundary states are experimentally demonstrated, which further verify the existence of in-gap edge and corner states. The robustness of these edge and corner states is revealed by introducing defects and disorders into the bulk structures. Our studies provide an extended platform for realizing light manipulation and stable photonic devices.

physics.optics↗