arXiv subjects

Tiantian Liu

Publications and source records attributed to Tiantian Liu.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Field-induced multipolar character in the dipolar ground state of the honeycomb rare-earth chalcohalide NdOF

Field-tunable reconstruction of crystalline electric field (CEF) doublets offers a promising avenue for inducing multipolar character, while its observation in real materials has been little explored so far. Here we establish the honeycomb rare-earth chalcohalide NdOF as such a platform. Raman spectroscopy identifies four CEF excitations at 1.7, 15.6, 19.2, and 80.9~meV, and a Zeeman--CEF analysis reproduces their nonlinear field splitting into seven branches. Magnetization and susceptibility over 0.1--9~T are well described by a CEF model for the total angular momentum $J = 9/2$ manifold, confirming the robustness of the extracted CEF scheme. These results demonstrate a field-driven continuous evolution of the ground-state doublet from dipolar to dipolar-multipolar character, with pressure providing a complementary tuning knob, establishing NdOF as a model system for exploring the controlled induction of multipolar components in rare-earth magnets.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2026

DiffPhD: A Unified Differentiable Solver for Projective Heterogeneous Materials in Elastodynamics with Contact-Rich GPU-Acceleration

Differentiable simulation of soft bodies is a foundation for system identification, trajectory optimization, and Real2Sim transfer. Yet, existing methods such as the differentiable Projective Dynamics (DiffPD) struggle when faced with heterogeneous materials with extreme stiffness contrasts, hyperelasticity under large deformations, and contact-rich interactions, which are common scenarios in the real world. We present DiffPhD, a unified GPU-accelerated differentiable Projective Dynamics framework for heterogeneous materials that tackles these intertwined challenges simultaneously. Our key insight is a careful integration of: (i) stiffness-aware projective weights to embed heterogeneity into the global system; (ii) trust-region eigenvalue filtering lifted to the backward pass for stable hyperelastic gradients and a type-II Anderson Acceleration scheme with dual-gate convergence to stabilize forward iteration under large stiffness contrasts; and (iii) a unified GPU pipeline that reuses a single sparse factor across forward, backward, and contact computations, with stiffness-amplified Rayleigh damping folded into the same factor for heterogeneity-aware dissipation at zero recurring cost. DiffPhD achieves strict gradient accuracy while delivering up to an order-of-magnitude speedup over prior differentiable solvers on heterogeneous, hyperelastic, contact-rich benchmarks. Crucially, this speedup does not come at the cost of stability: DiffPhD remains convergent on stiffness contrasts up to 100x where prior PD solvers degrade. This unlocks end-to-end gradient-based optimization on regimes previously bottlenecked by either solver fragility or per-iteration cost -- shell--joint composite creatures, soft characters wielding stiff weapons, and soft-gripper robotic manipulation -- all handled within a single forward--backward pass.

cs.GR↗

arXiv2026

An Efficient Multilevel Preconditioned Nonlinear Conjugate Gradient Method for Incremental Potential Contact

Incremental Potential Contact (IPC) guarantees intersection-free simulation but suffers from high computational costs due to the expensive Hessian assembly and linear solves required by Newton's method. While Preconditioned Nonlinear Conjugate Gradient (PNCG) avoids Hessian assembly, it has historically struggled with poor convergence in stiff, contact-rich scenarios due to the lack of effective preconditioners; simple Jacobi preconditioners fail to capture the global coupling, while advanced hierarchy-based preconditioners like Multilevel Additive Schwarz (MAS) are computationally prohibitive to rebuild at every nonlinear iteration. We present MAS-PNCG, a method that unlocks the power of hierarchical preconditioning for nonlinear optimization. Our key technical innovation is a Sparse-Input Woodbury update algorithm that incrementally adapts the fine-level MAS components to rapidly evolving contact sets. This bypasses the need for full preconditioner rebuilds, reducing maintenance cost to near-zero while capturing the complex spectral properties of the contact system. Furthermore, we replace heuristic PNCG search directions with a Hessian-aware 2D subspace minimization that optimally combines the preconditioned gradient and previous direction. We also apply a fast per-subdomain conservative CCD method that ensures penetration-free trajectories while avoiding overly restrictive global step sizes. Experiments demonstrate that our MAS-PNCG outperforms state-of-the-art Newton-PCG solvers, GIPC and StiffGIPC, both preconditioned with MAS up to 5.66$\times$ and 2.07$\times$ respectively.

cs.GR↗

arXiv2025

Lossless Compression: A New Benchmark for Time Series Model Evaluation

The evaluation of time series models has traditionally focused on four canonical tasks: forecasting, imputation, anomaly detection, and classification. While these tasks have driven significant progress, they primarily assess task-specific performance and do not rigorously measure whether a model captures the full generative distribution of the data. We introduce lossless compression as a new paradigm for evaluating time series models, grounded in Shannon's source coding theorem. This perspective establishes a direct equivalence between optimal compression length and the negative log-likelihood, providing a strict and unified information-theoretic criterion for modeling capacity. Then We define a standardized evaluation protocol and metrics. We further propose and open-source a comprehensive evaluation framework TSCom-Bench, which enables the rapid adaptation of time series models as backbones for lossless compression. Experiments across diverse datasets on state-of-the-art models, including TimeXer, iTransformer, and PatchTST, demonstrate that compression reveals distributional weaknesses overlooked by classic benchmarks. These findings position lossless compression as a principled task that complements and extends existing evaluation for time series modeling.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

Skeleton-Guided Learning for Shortest Path Search

Shortest path search is a core operation in graph-based applications, yet existing methods face important limitations. Classical algorithms such as Dijkstra's and A* become inefficient as graphs grow more complex, while index-based techniques often require substantial preprocessing and storage. Recent learning-based approaches typically focus on spatial graphs and rely on context-specific features like geographic coordinates, limiting their general applicability. We propose a versatile learning-based framework for shortest path search on generic graphs, without requiring domain-specific features. At the core of our approach is the construction of a skeleton graph that captures multi-level distance and hop information in a compact form. A Skeleton Graph Neural Network (SGNN) operates on this structure to learn node embeddings and predict distances and hop lengths between node pairs. These predictions support LSearch, a guided search algorithm that uses model-driven pruning to reduce the search space while preserving accuracy. To handle larger graphs, we introduce a hierarchical training strategy that partitions the graph into subgraphs with individually trained SGNNs. This structure enables HLSearch, an extension of our method for efficient path search across graph partitions. Experiments on five diverse real-world graphs demonstrate that our framework achieves strong performance across graph types, offering a flexible and effective solution for learning-based shortest path search.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

MGPBD: A Multigrid Accelerated Global XPBD Solver

We introduce a novel Unsmoothed Aggregation (UA) Algebraic Multigrid (AMG) method combined with Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient (PCG) to overcome the limitations of Extended Position-Based Dynamics (XPBD) in high-resolution and high-stiffness simulations. While XPBD excels in simulating deformable objects due to its speed and simplicity, its nonlinear Gauss-Seidel (GS) solver often struggles with low-frequency errors, leading to instability and stalling issues, especially in high-resolution, high-stiffness simulations. Our multigrid approach addresses these issues efficiently by leveraging AMG. To reduce the computational overhead of traditional AMG, where prolongator construction can consume up to two-thirds of the runtime, we propose a lazy setup strategy that reuses prolongators across iterations based on matrix structure and physical significance. Furthermore, we introduce a simplified method for constructing near-kernel components by applying a few sweeps of iterative methods to the homogeneous equation, achieving convergence rates comparable to adaptive smoothed aggregation (adaptive-SA) at a lower computational cost. Experimental results demonstrate that our method significantly improves convergence rates and numerical stability, enabling efficient and stable high-resolution simulations of deformable objects.

cs.GR↗

arXiv2025

Enlightenment Period Improving DNN Performance

The start of deep neural network training is characterized by a brief yet critical phase that lasts from the beginning of the training until the accuracy reaches approximately 50\%. During this phase, disordered representations rapidly transition toward ordered structure, and we term this phase the Enlightenment Period. Through theoretical modeling based on phase transition theory and experimental validation, we reveal that applying Mixup data augmentation during this phase has a dual effect: it introduces a Gradient Interference Effect that hinders performance, while also providing a beneficial Activation Revival Effect to restore gradient updates for saturated neurons. We further demonstrate that this negative interference diminishes as the sample set size or the model parameter size increases, thereby shifting the balance between these two effects. Based on these findings, we propose three strategies that improve performance by solely adjusting the training data distribution within this brief period: the Mixup Pause Strategy for small-scale scenarios, the Alpha Boost Strategy for large-scale scenarios with underfitting, and the High-Loss Removal Strategy for tasks where Mixup is inapplicable (e.g., time series and large language models). Extensive experiments show that these strategies achieve superior performance across diverse architectures such as ViT and ResNet on datasets including CIFAR and ImageNet-1K. Ultimately, this work offers a novel perspective on enhancing model performance by strategically capitalizing on the dynamics of the brief and crucial early stages of training. Code is available at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/code-A5F1/.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

ACTIVE: Continuous Similarity Search for Vessel Trajectories

Publicly available vessel trajectory data is emitted continuously from the global AIS system. Continuous trajectory similarity search on this data has applications in, e.g., maritime navigation and safety. Existing proposals typically assume an offline setting and focus on finding similarities between complete trajectories. Such proposals are less effective when applied to online scenarios, where similarity comparisons must be performed continuously as new trajectory data arrives and trajectories evolve. We therefore propose a real-time continuous trajectory similarity search method for vessels (ACTIVE). We introduce a novel similarity measure, object-trajectory real-time distance, that emphasizes the anticipated future movement trends of vessels, enabling more predictive and forward-looking comparisons. Next, we propose an efficient continuous similar trajectory search (CSTS) algorithm together with a segment-based vessel trajectory index and a variety of search space pruning strategies that reduce unnecessary computations during the continuous similarity search, thereby further improving efficiency. Extensive experiments on two large real-world AIS datasets offer evidence that ACTIVE is capable of outperforming state-of-the-art methods considerably. ACTIVE significantly reduces index construction costs and index size while achieving a 70% reduction in terms of query time and a 60% increase in terms of hit rate.

cs.DB↗

arXiv2024

Eguard: Defending LLM Embeddings Against Inversion Attacks via Text Mutual Information Optimization

Embeddings have become a cornerstone in the functionality of large language models (LLMs) due to their ability to transform text data into rich, dense numerical representations that capture semantic and syntactic properties. These embedding vector databases serve as the long-term memory of LLMs, enabling efficient handling of a wide range of natural language processing tasks. However, the surge in popularity of embedding vector databases in LLMs has been accompanied by significant concerns about privacy leakage. Embedding vector databases are particularly vulnerable to embedding inversion attacks, where adversaries can exploit the embeddings to reverse-engineer and extract sensitive information from the original text data. Existing defense mechanisms have shown limitations, often struggling to balance security with the performance of downstream tasks. To address these challenges, we introduce Eguard, a novel defense mechanism designed to mitigate embedding inversion attacks. Eguard employs a transformer-based projection network and text mutual information optimization to safeguard embeddings while preserving the utility of LLMs. Our approach significantly reduces privacy risks, protecting over 95% of tokens from inversion while maintaining high performance across downstream tasks consistent with original embeddings.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2023

Complex Locomotion Skill Learning via Differentiable Physics

Differentiable physics enables efficient gradient-based optimizations of neural network (NN) controllers. However, existing work typically only delivers NN controllers with limited capability and generalizability. We present a practical learning framework that outputs unified NN controllers capable of tasks with significantly improved complexity and diversity. To systematically improve training robustness and efficiency, we investigated a suite of improvements over the baseline approach, including periodic activation functions, and tailored loss functions. In addition, we find our adoption of batching and an Adam optimizer effective in training complex locomotion tasks. We evaluate our framework on differentiable mass-spring and material point method (MPM) simulations, with challenging locomotion tasks and multiple robot designs. Experiments show that our learning framework, based on differentiable physics, delivers better results than reinforcement learning and converges much faster. We demonstrate that users can interactively control soft robot locomotion and switch among multiple goals with specified velocity, height, and direction instructions using a unified NN controller trained in our system. Code is available at https://github.com/erizmr/Complex-locomotion-skill-learning-via-differentiable-physics.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2023

Digital Twin System for Home Service Robot Based on Motion Simulation

In order to improve the task execution capability of home service robot, and to cope with the problem that purely physical robot platforms cannot sense the environment and make decisions online, a method for building digital twin system for home service robot based on motion simulation is proposed. A reliable mapping of the home service robot and its working environment from physical space to digital space is achieved in three dimensions: geometric, physical and functional. In this system, a digital space-oriented URDF file parser is designed and implemented for the automatic construction of the robot geometric model. Next, the physical model is constructed from the kinematic equations of the robot and an improved particle swarm optimization algorithm is proposed for the inverse kinematic solution. In addition, to adapt to the home environment, functional attributes are used to describe household objects, thus improving the semantic description of the digital space for the real home environment. Finally, through geometric model consistency verification, physical model validity verification and virtual-reality consistency verification, it shows that the digital twin system designed in this paper can construct the robot geometric model accurately and completely, complete the operation of household objects successfully, and the digital twin system is effective and practical.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2023

Connectional-Style-Guided Contextual Representation Learning for Brain Disease Diagnosis

Structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) has shown great clinical value and has been widely used in deep learning (DL) based computer-aided brain disease diagnosis. Previous approaches focused on local shapes and textures in sMRI that may be significant only within a particular domain. The learned representations are likely to contain spurious information and have a poor generalization ability in other diseases and datasets. To facilitate capturing meaningful and robust features, it is necessary to first comprehensively understand the intrinsic pattern of the brain that is not restricted within a single data/task domain. Considering that the brain is a complex connectome of interlinked neurons, the connectional properties in the brain have strong biological significance, which is shared across multiple domains and covers most pathological information. In this work, we propose a connectional style contextual representation learning model (CS-CRL) to capture the intrinsic pattern of the brain, used for multiple brain disease diagnosis. Specifically, it has a vision transformer (ViT) encoder and leverages mask reconstruction as the proxy task and Gram matrices to guide the representation of connectional information. It facilitates the capture of global context and the aggregation of features with biological plausibility. The results indicate that CS-CRL achieves superior accuracy in multiple brain disease diagnosis tasks across six datasets and three diseases and outperforms state-of-the-art models. Furthermore, we demonstrate that CS-CRL captures more brain-network-like properties, better aggregates features, is easier to optimize and is more robust to noise, which explains its superiority in theory. Our source code will be released soon.

eess.IV↗

arXiv2023

Contact Tracing over Uncertain Indoor Positioning Data (Extended Version)

Pandemics often cause dramatic losses of human lives and impact our societies in many aspects such as public health, tourism, and economy. To contain the spread of an epidemic like COVID-19, efficient and effective contact tracing is important, especially in indoor venues where the risk of infection is higher. In this work, we formulate and study a novel query called Indoor Contact Query (ICQ) over raw, uncertain indoor positioning data that digitalizes people's movements indoors. Given a query object o, e.g., a person confirmed to be a virus carrier, an ICQ analyzes uncertain indoor positioning data to find objects that most likely had close contact with o for a long period of time. To process ICQ, we propose a set of techniques. First, we design an enhanced indoor graph model to organize different types of data necessary for ICQ. Second, for indoor moving objects, we devise methods to determine uncertain regions and to derive positioning samples missing in the raw data. Third, we propose a query processing framework with a close contact determination method, a search algorithm, and the acceleration strategies. We conduct extensive experiments on synthetic and real datasets to evaluate our proposals. The results demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of our proposals.

cs.DB↗

arXiv2022

A comparative study to alternatives to the log-rank test

Studies to compare the survival of two or more groups using time-to-event data are of high importance in medical research. The gold standard is the log-rank test, which is optimal under proportional hazards. As the latter is no simple regularity assumption, we are interested in evaluating the power of various statistical tests under different settings including proportional and non-proportional hazards with a special emphasize on crossing hazards. This challenge has been going on for many years now and multiple methods have already been investigated in extensive simulation studies. However, in recent years new omnibus tests and methods based on the restricted mean survival time appeared that have been strongly recommended in biometric literature. Thus, to give updated recommendations, we perform a vast simulation study to compare tests that showed high power in previous studies with these more recent approaches. We thereby analyze various simulation settings with varying survival and censoring distributions, unequal censoring between groups, small sample sizes and unbalanced group sizes. Overall, omnibus tests are more robust in terms of power against deviations from the proportional hazards assumption.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2021

Towards Crowd-aware Indoor Path Planning (Extended Version)

Indoor venues accommodate many people who collectively form crowds. Such crowds in turn influence people's routing choices, e.g., people may prefer to avoid crowded rooms when walking from A to B. This paper studies two types of crowd-aware indoor path planning queries. The Indoor Crowd-Aware Fastest Path Query (FPQ) finds a path with the shortest travel time in the presence of crowds, whereas the Indoor Least Crowded Path Query (LCPQ) finds a path encountering the least objects en route. To process the queries, we design a unified framework with three major components. First, an indoor crowd model organizes indoor topology and captures object flows between rooms. Second, a time-evolving population estimator derives room populations for a future timestamp to support crowd-aware routing cost computations in query processing. Third, two exact and two approximate query processing algorithms process each type of query. All algorithms are based on graph traversal over the indoor crowd model and use the same search framework with different strategies of updating the populations during the search process. All proposals are evaluated experimentally on synthetic and real data. The experimental results demonstrate the efficiency and scalability of our framework and query processing algorithms.

cs.DB↗

arXiv2020

An Experimental Analysis of Indoor Spatial Queries: Modeling, Indexing, and Processing

Indoor location-based services (LBS), such as POI search and routing, are often built on top of typical indoor spatial queries. To support such queries and indoor LBS, multiple techniques including model/indexes and search algorithms have been proposed. In this work, we conduct an extensive experimental study on existing proposals for indoor spatial queries. We survey five model/indexes, compare their algorithmic characteristics, and analyze their space and time complexities. We also design an in-depth benchmark with real and synthetic datasets, evaluation tasks and performance metrics. Enabled by the benchmark, we obtain and report the performance results of all model/indexes under investigation. By analyzing the results, we summarize the pros and cons of all techniques and suggest the best choice for typical scenarios.

cs.DB↗

arXiv2020

Boosting Connectivity in Retinal Vessel Segmentation via a Recursive Semantics-Guided Network

Many deep learning based methods have been proposed for retinal vessel segmentation, however few of them focus on the connectivity of segmented vessels, which is quite important for a practical computer-aided diagnosis system on retinal images. In this paper, we propose an efficient network to address this problem. A U-shape network is enhanced by introducing a semantics-guided module, which integrates the enriched semantics information to shallow layers for guiding the network to explore more powerful features. Besides, a recursive refinement iteratively applies the same network over the previous segmentation results for progressively boosting the performance while increasing no extra network parameters. The carefully designed recursive semantics-guided network has been extensively evaluated on several public datasets. Experimental results have shown the efficiency of the proposed method.

eess.IV↗

arXiv2019

FS-indicators of pq-dimensional pointed Hopf algebras

We compute higher Frobenius-Schur indicators of pq-dimensional pointed Hopf algebras in characteristic p through their associated graded Hopf algebras. These indicators are gauge invariants for the monoidal categories of representations of these algebras.

math.QA↗