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Weiping Liu

Publications and source records attributed to Weiping Liu.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

Design and commissioning of a windowless gas-target system for high-current beams at JUNA

Windowless gas targets avoid the beam-energy loss and straggling introduced by entrance foils and are therefore well suited for direct measurements of low-energy nuclear reactions. A windowless gas-target system designed for operation with milliampere beams has been developed for the Jinping Underground Nuclear Astrophysics facility (JUNA). The system combines three-stage differential pumping, closed-loop gas recovery and purification, a constant-temperature power-compensation calorimeter, and a position-resolved target-thickness monitor based on secondary elastic scattering. Stable operation was achieved over a target-pressure range of 1-3 mbar, with pressure fluctuations below 1% during 8 h of continuous circulation, while the accelerator-side pressure was maintained at approximately \(10^{-4}\) Pa. The closed-loop gas-circulation system maintained stable target conditions, while gas-transport calculations indicated that the axial pressure nonuniformity remained within approximately 1.6% under representative operating conditions. Calorimeter measurements were consistent with the thermal calculations, supporting the sensitivity correction used for beam-power determination. Beam commissioning with \(^{14}\mathrm{N}(p,\gamma)^{15}\mathrm{O}\) and \(^{12}\mathrm{C}(p,\gamma)^{13}\mathrm{N}\) at the 600 kV Cockcroft-Walton accelerator of the China Institute of Atomic Energy (CIAE) demonstrated stable operation of the gas-target and \(\gamma\)-ray detection systems and provided information on the influences of reaction position and beam heating. These results demonstrate the operating stability and diagnostic capability of the system for future high-current, low-energy nuclear-reaction measurements at JUNA.

astro-ph.GA↗
arXiv2026

Machine Learning methods for event classification and vertex reconstruction of the 12C + 12C reaction with the MATE-TPC

In modern nuclear physics experiments, identifying events of interest is challenging for nuclear reaction studies with the active target Time Projection Chamber (TPC). In this work, machine learning techniques are employed to analyze the complex data of the 12C + 12C fusion reaction from a TPC named MATE (multi-purpose active-target time projection chamber for nuclear experiments). Specifically, we successfully applied Residual Neural Network (ResNet-50, ResNet-34 and ResNet-18) and Visual Geometry Group (VGG-19) to classify elastic scattering and fusion reaction events from the 12C + 12C reaction. The classification results of the four models are nearly identical, with accuracies of approximately 97% for the simulated data and 90% for the experimental data. Moreover, these approaches successfully identify some events that are misclassified by traditional methods. These models are also applied to classify events from different fusion reaction channels, with classification accuracies of approximately 95% on simulated data. In addition, a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model is developed to reconstruct the reaction vertex, providing an alternative strategy for vertex reconstruction. These results indicate that machine learning techniques can effectively classify reaction events from different channels and reconstruct the reaction vertex, thereby paving the way for future analyses of complex nuclear reaction data.

cs.LG↗
arXiv2026

Parallelism and Generation Order in Masked Diffusion Language Models: Limits Today, Potential Tomorrow

Masked Diffusion Language Models (MDLMs) promise parallel token generation and arbitrary-order decoding, yet it remains unclear to what extent current models truly realize these capabilities. We characterize MDLM behavior along two dimensions -- parallelism strength and generation order -- using Average Finalization Parallelism (AFP) and Kendall's tau. We evaluate eight mainstream MDLMs (up to 100B parameters) on 58 benchmarks spanning knowledge, reasoning, and programming. The results show that MDLMs still lag behind comparably sized autoregressive models, mainly because parallel probabilistic modeling weakens inter-token dependencies. Meanwhile, MDLMs exhibit adaptive decoding behavior: their parallelism and generation order vary significantly with the task domain, the stage of reasoning, and whether the output is correct. On tasks that require "backward information" (e.g., Sudoku), MDLMs adopt a solution order that tends to fill easier Sudoku blanks first, highlighting their advantages. Finally, we provide theoretical motivation and design insights supporting a Generate-then-Edit paradigm, which mitigates dependency loss while retaining the efficiency of parallel decoding.

cs.CL↗
arXiv2026

Impact of Nuclear Reaction Rates on Calcium Production in Population III Stars: A Global Analysis

We investigate the sensitivity of calcium production to nuclear reaction rates of a 40 solar-mass Population III star using 1D multi-zone stellar models. A comprehensive nuclear reaction network was constructed, and all $(p,\gamma)$ and $(p,\alpha)$ reaction rates were individually varied by a factor of 10 up and down, identifying 13 preliminary key reactions for calcium production. To propagate the reaction rate uncertainties on calcium production, two sets of Monte Carlo simulations were performed for these key reactions: one adopting STARLIB reaction rates and the other incorporating updated rates from recent experimental data and evaluations. Our results show that Monte Carlo simulations using the updated rates show good agreement with the observed calcium abundance of the extremely iron-poor star SMSS J031300.36-670839.3 within the 68% confidence interval predicted by the models. In contrast, the observed calcium abundance lies marginally outside the 68% C.I. when using the STARLIB rates. Spearman rank-order correlation analysis and SHAP values show that the $(p,\gamma)$ and $(p,\alpha)$ reactions of F18 and F19 exhibit strong coupled effects on calcium production. These reaction-rate uncertainties need to be reduced to constrain the stellar model predictions. Our study provides insights for future nuclear physics experiments aimed at reducing reaction rate uncertainties in the nucleosynthesis of Population III Stars. Additionally, comparisons between 20 solar-mass and 40 solar-mass Population III stellar models confirm that the latter, with updated reaction rates, is more capable of reproducing the observed Ca abundance and [Ca/Mg] ratio.

astro-ph.SR↗
arXiv2025

Impact of Nuclear Reaction Rate Uncertainties on Type I X-ray Burst Nucleosynthesis: A Monte Carlo Study

Type I X-ray bursts are thermonuclear flashes on the surface of accreting neutron stars, involving hundreds of nuclei and thousands of reactions with larger uncertainties in reaction rate. To investigate the impact of nuclear reaction rate uncertainties on type I X-ray burst nucleosynthesis, comprehensive Monte Carlo simulations were performed with temperature-independent and -dependent variations in reaction rates using the REACLIB and STARLIB libraries, respectively. A total of 1,711 $(p, \gamma)$, $(p, \alpha)$, $(\alpha, p)$, and $(\alpha, \gamma)$ reaction rates are varied simultaneously along with their inverse reactions via detailed balance. For the first time, it has been found that Monte Carlo sampling with larger perturbations to these reaction rates may lead to multi-peak abundance distributions for certain isotopes, such as $^{64}$Zn and $^{55}$Co. These multi-peak structures arise not only from coupled reactions but also from single reactions in some cases. Our studies also confirm previously identified key reactions and provide more robust lists that deserve priority consideration in future studies.

astro-ph.HE↗
arXiv2025

Comprehensive X-ray Spectral-timing Analysis of GRS 1915+105 Based on Insight-HXMT Observations

GRS 1915+105 has been well studied since its discovery, and is well-known for its complex light curve variability. Using the full currently available Insight-HXMT dataset from July 2017 to June 2023, we make a comprehensive spectral-timing analysis of this source and report four main findings. First, we uncover a QPO frequency rising branch between MJD 58206 and 58230, where the centroid frequency increases from $\sim$2 Hz to $\sim$6 Hz, consistent with a spectral state transition from the hard to intermediate state. This rising branch completes the full QPO frequency evolution cycle when combined with the subsequent frequency decay phase, and had been missed in prior NICER and Insight-HXMT studies. Second, we identify a previously unreported Flare 3 during the obscured state, which shows distinct spectral and timing properties compared to the earlier flares. Third, we detect sub-Hz QPOs (<1 Hz) in all three flares, specifically at $\sim$0.01 Hz in Flare 1 and $\sim$0.2 Hz in both Flares 2 and 3. In particular, the weak $\sim$0.2 Hz signals observed in Flare 3 indicate ongoing coronal activity despite strong obscuration. Finally, a comparison between QPOs above and below 1 Hz suggests distinct origins, with the former likely arising from Lense-Thirring precession of the inner hot flow and the latter from magnetic perturbations driving a failed disk wind. These findings offer new insights into the unique accretion geometry and variability behaviors of GRS 1915+105.

astro-ph.HE↗
arXiv2025

Comparison of FTN-NOFDM and PCS-OFDM for Long-Haul Coherent Optical Communications

Single-wavelength 400G coherent optical communications have become a critical solution to meet the explosive traffic demands. However, the single-carrier modulation using low-order modulation formats requires a broader wavelength division multiplexing grid and expands the occupied optical bandwidth. In this paper, we propose the faster-than-Nyquist non-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (FTN-NOFDM) to improve the spectral efficiency for long-haul coherent optical communications. The subcarrier number is set to eight to enable low-complexity FTN-NOFDM signal generation using a pruned inverse fast Fourier transform and inter-carrier interference (ICI) cancellation. To deal with the conventional timing recovery (TR) failure, a frequency tone-based TR is proposed for FTN-NOFDM. A time-domain multiple-input multiple-output equalizer is designed to update the tap coefficients based on outputs of conventional iterative detection (ID). To further mitigate ICI, a low-density parity check-assisted ID is integrated into the conventional ID module. FTN-NOFDM, probabilistic constellation shaping (PCS)-OFDM, and quadrature phase shift keying-OFDM are experimentally compared in a 400G coherent optical communication system over 11 cascaded 125-GHz wavelength-selective switches (WSSs) and 2000 km transmission. Results show that the FTN-NOFDM exhibits comparable WSS filtering tolerance to PCS-OFDM and superior nonlinearity tolerance, while PCS-OFDM achieves the best bit error ratio performance.

cs.NI↗
arXiv2025

New Determination of the $^{14}$C(n, $\gamma$)$^{15}$C Reaction Rate and Its Astrophysical Implications

We present a novel experiment to investigate the spectroscopic factor of the $^{15}$C ground state for the first time using single-neutron $removal$ transfer reactions on $^{15}$C. Two consistent spectroscopic factors were derived from the (p, d) and (d, t) reactions, which were subsequently used to deduce the $^{14}$C(n, $\gamma$)$^{15}$C reaction cross section and the corresponding stellar reaction rate. A typical cross section of (3.89 $\pm$ 0.76) $\mu$b is determined at $E_\mathrm{_{c.m.}}$ = 23.3 keV. At the temperature range of 0.01-4 GK, our new reaction rate is 2.4-3.7 times higher than that of the first direct measurement and 20\%-25\% lower than that of the most recent direct measurement, respectively. Moreover, it is interesting that we can associate a long-standing nuclear structure issue, i.e., the so-called ``quenching'' effect, with this astrophysically relevant reaction. Finally, motivated by astrophysical interests of this reaction decades ago, implications of our new rate on several astrophysical problems are evaluated using state-of-the-art theoretical models. Our calculations demonstrate that the abundances of $^{14}$N and $^{15}$N can be enhanced in the inner regions of asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars, though with minimal impact on the chemical compositions of the interstellar medium. In the inhomogeneous Big Bang nucleosynthesis, the updated reaction rate can lead to a $\sim 20\%$ variation in the final yields of $^{15}$N in neutron rich regions. For the $r$-process in the core-collapse supernovae, a slight difference of $\sim 0.2\%$ in the final abundances of heavy elements with $A > 90$ can be found by using our new rate.

nucl-ex↗
arXiv2025

Study on the Impact of Radioactive Background on the Dark Count Rate of 20-inch MCP-PMTs

This study systematically investigates the impact of natural radioactive background on the dark count rate (DCR) of 20-inch microchannel plate photomultiplier tubes (MCP-PMTs). Variations in PMT DCR under different radiation conditions were examined via underground tests, lead shielding experiments, and irradiation with \(^{55}\mathrm{Fe}\), \(^{60}\mathrm{Co}\), and \(^{90}\mathrm{Sr}\) sources. The experimental results indicate that natural radioactivity from surrounding air and rock in the underground environment results in a significantly higher DCR compared to laboratory conditions. Further, lead shielding experiments confirmed that effective shielding can markedly reduce the interference from environmental background radiation. Notably, $\beta$ particles from the \(^{90}\mathrm{Sr}\) source increased the DCR by approximately 14 kHz, whereas the effects of $\mathrm{X}$-rays from \(^{55}\mathrm{Fe}\) and $\gamma$-rays from \(^{60}\mathrm{Co}\) were comparatively minor. In addition, Geant4 simulations provided quantitative analysis of Cherenkov radiation induced by $\beta$ particles, with the simulation results closely matching the experimental data and confirming $\beta$ particles as the primary contributor to the DCR increase. These findings offer both theoretical and experimental evidence for a deeper understanding of the influence of radioactive background on 20-inch MCP-PMTs' performance in underground experiments and hold significant implications for improving the energy resolution of large-scale neutrino detection systems

hep-ex↗
arXiv2025

Nuclear Physics at BRIF

The Beijing Radioactive Ion-beam Facility (BRIF), which is based on Isotope Separation On-Line (ISOL) technique, consists of a 100 MeV proton cyclotron as the driving accelerator, a two-stage ISOL system for ion separation, a 13-MV tandem accelerator for post-acceleration, a superconducting linac for further boosting beam energies. It is capable of providing ISOL beams in the energy range from 60 to 300 keV, and post-accelerated beams in the energy range from 3 to 10 MeV/u for nuclei with mass numbers of A < 80 by Isotope Separation On-Line (ISOL) technique. For nuclei with A up to 170, energies are still able to reach 3 MeV/u. This facility offers opportunities to address key questions of current interest in nuclear astrophysics, nuclear structure and reactions of unstable nuclei. In this review we present a comprehensive introduction to the BRIF and the typical experimental instruments installed on it, and then summarize current experimental results on unstable Na and Rb isotopes and future plan for further development of the BRIF to improve its performance.

physics.acc-ph↗
arXiv2025

Real-Time Burst-Mode Digital Signal Processing for Passive Optical Networks

Driven by the ever-increasing capacity demands, the 50G passive optical network (PON) is maturing gradually. One of the main challenges for the 50G PON is implementing burst-mode digital signal processing (BM-DSP) for the burst upstream signal. In this paper, we demonstrate a real-time BM-DSP for burst reception of 25Gbit/s on-off keying signal to meet the asymmetric-mode 50G PON demand. The real-time BM-DSP includes the BM frequency-domain timing recovery and BM frequency-domain equalizer, which can be fast converged based on the 42ns designed preamble. Meanwhile, the simplified implementations for fast-Fourier-transform, minimum-mean-square-error, and decision-directed least-mean-square-error algorithms decrease the DSP resources by 28.57%, enabling the loading of real-time BM-DSP in the field programmable gate array with the limited DSP resources. The real-time implementation of BM-DSP can guide the design of application-specific integrated circuits for 50G PON.

cs.NI↗
arXiv2024

Burst-Mode Digital Signal Processing for Coherent Optical Time-Division Multiple Access

As the 50G optical access gradually matures, it is time to discuss Beyond 50G optical access. According to the evolution rules of optical access standards, Beyond 50G optical access data rate may achieve 200Gb/s. Direct detection faces great challenges for Beyond 50G optical access, which makes coherent detection a potential solution. Similar to 50G optical timing-division-multiple access (TDMA), burst-mode digital signal processing (BM-DSP) is also required for Beyond 50G coherent optical TDMA (CO-TDMA). This paper proposes coherent BM-DSP (Co-BM-DSP) based on approximately 10ns designed preambles to process the burst signal for 200G CO-TDMA, which can fast estimate the state of polarization, frequency offset, sampling phase offset, synchronization position, and equalizer coefficients. Meanwhile, for obtaining the equalizer coefficients based on the designed preamble, the channel estimation based on the minimum-mean-square-error criterion is theoretically proven to have a unique solution for ensuring reliability. In conclusion, the proposed Co-BM-DSP based on the designed preambles paves the way for the applications of Beyond 50G CO-TDMA.

cs.NI↗
arXiv2024

Timing Recovery for Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access with Asynchronous Clocks

A passive optical network (PON) based on non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) meets low latency and high capacity. In the NOMA-PON, the asynchronous clocks between the strong and weak optical network units (ONUs) cause the timing error and phase noise on the signal of the weak ONU. The theoretical derivation shows that the timing error and phase noise can be independently compensated. In this Letter, we propose a timing recovery (TR) algorithm based on an absolute timing error detector (Abs TED) and a pilot-based carrier phase recovery (CPR) to eliminate the timing error and phase noise separately. An experiment for 25G NOMA-PON is set up to verify the feasibility of the proposed algorithms. The weak ONU can achieve the 20% soft-decision forward error correction limit after compensating for timing error and phase noise. In conclusion, the proposed TR and the pilot-based CPR show great potential for the NOMA-PON.

eess.SP↗
arXiv2024

Hunting imaging biomarkers in pulmonary fibrosis: Benchmarks of the AIIB23 challenge

Airway-related quantitative imaging biomarkers are crucial for examination, diagnosis, and prognosis in pulmonary diseases. However, the manual delineation of airway trees remains prohibitively time-consuming. While significant efforts have been made towards enhancing airway modelling, current public-available datasets concentrate on lung diseases with moderate morphological variations. The intricate honeycombing patterns present in the lung tissues of fibrotic lung disease patients exacerbate the challenges, often leading to various prediction errors. To address this issue, the 'Airway-Informed Quantitative CT Imaging Biomarker for Fibrotic Lung Disease 2023' (AIIB23) competition was organized in conjunction with the official 2023 International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI). The airway structures were meticulously annotated by three experienced radiologists. Competitors were encouraged to develop automatic airway segmentation models with high robustness and generalization abilities, followed by exploring the most correlated QIB of mortality prediction. A training set of 120 high-resolution computerised tomography (HRCT) scans were publicly released with expert annotations and mortality status. The online validation set incorporated 52 HRCT scans from patients with fibrotic lung disease and the offline test set included 140 cases from fibrosis and COVID-19 patients. The results have shown that the capacity of extracting airway trees from patients with fibrotic lung disease could be enhanced by introducing voxel-wise weighted general union loss and continuity loss. In addition to the competitive image biomarkers for prognosis, a strong airway-derived biomarker (Hazard ratio>1.5, p<0.0001) was revealed for survival prognostication compared with existing clinical measurements, clinician assessment and AI-based biomarkers.

eess.IV↗
arXiv2024

IQ Skew and Imbalance Estimation for Coherent Point-to-Multi-Point Optical Networks

Coherent point-to-multi-point (PtMP) optical network based on digital subcarrier multiplexing (DSCM) has been a promising technology for metro and access networks to achieve cost savings, low latency, and high flexibility. In-phase and quadrature (IQ) impairments of the coherent transceiver (e.g. IQ skew and power imbalance) cause severe performance degradation. In the DSCM-based coherent PtMP optical networks, it is hard to realize far-end IQ-impairments estimation for the hub transmitter because the leaf on one subcarrier cannot acquire the signal on the symmetrical subcarrier. In this paper, we propose a far-end IQ-impairments estimation based on the specially designed time-and-frequency interleaving tones (TFITs), which can simultaneously estimate IQ skews and power imbalances of the hub transmitter and leaf receiver at an individual leaf. The feasibility of the TFITs-based IQ-impairments estimation has been experimentally verified by setting up $8$Gbaud/SC $\times$ $4$SCs DSCM-based coherent PtMP optical network. The experimental results depict that the absolute errors in the estimated IQ skew and power imbalance are within $\pm 0.5$ps and $\pm 0.2$dB, respectively. In conclusion, TFITs-based IQ-impairments estimation has great potential for DSCM-based coherent PtMP optical networks.

cs.NI↗
arXiv2023

Pilot-Based Key Distribution and Encryption for Secure Coherent Passive Optical Networks

The security issues of passive optical networks (PONs) have always been a concern due to broadcast transmission. Physical-layer security enhancement for the coherent PON should be as significant as improving transmission performance. In this paper, we propose the advanced encryption standard (AES) algorithm and geometric constellation shaping four-level pulse amplitude modulation (GCS-PAM4) pilot-based key distribution for secure coherent PON. The first bit of the GCS-PAM4 pilot is used for the hardware-efficient carrier phase recovery (CPR), while the second bit is utilized for key distribution without occupying the additional overhead. The key bits are encoded by the polar code to ensure error-free distribution. Frequent key updates are permitted for every codeword to improve the security of coherent PON. The experimental results of the 200-Gbps secure coherent PON using digital subcarrier multiplexing with 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation show that the GCS-PAM4 pilot-based key distribution could be error-free at upstream transmission without occupying the additional overhead and the eavesdropping would be prevented by AES algorithm at downstream transmission. Moreover, there is almost no performance penalty on the CPR using the GCS-PAM4 pilot compared to the binary phase shift keying pilot.

cs.CR↗
arXiv2023

Capacity Limitation and Optimization Strategy for Flexible Point-to-Multi-Point Optical Networks

Point-to-multi-point (PtMP) optical networks become the main solutions for network-edge applications such as passive optical networks and radio access networks. Entropy-loading digital subcarrier multiplexing (DSCM) is the core technology to achieve low latency and approach high capacity for flexible PtMP optical networks. However, the high peak-to-average power ratio of the entropy-loading DSCM signal limits the power budget and restricts the capacity, which can be reduced effectively by clipping operation. In this paper, we derive the theoretical capacity limitation of the flexible PtMP optical networks based on the entropy-loading DSCM signal. Meanwhile, an optimal clipping ratio for the clipping operation is acquired to approach the highest capacity limitation. Based on an accurate clipping-noise model under the optimal clipping ratio, we establish a three-dimensional look-up table for bit-error ratio, spectral efficiency, and link loss. Based on the three-dimensional look-up table, an optimization strategy is proposed to acquire optimal spectral efficiencies for achieving a higher capacity of the flexible PtMP optical networks.

cs.IT↗