SearcharxivSearch

arXiv subjects

Xin Sun

Publications and source records attributed to Xin Sun.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Continuous Autonomous Refactoring: A Research Roadmap for AI-Driven Code Quality Maintenance

Large language models have shown promising capabilities in code refactoring, but existing approaches remain limited to method-level tasks. In this paper, we envision LLM-based refactoring as a continuous component of software maintenance rather than a tool invoked only for occasional manual refactoring. Under this vision, AI agents continuously monitor, evaluate, and improve codebases against explicit and evolving notions of software quality. We present a roadmap organized around five dimensions: the multi-objective optimization problem, quality definition and evaluation, multi-timescale integration of heterogeneous signals, architecture and design pattern, and trust in autonomous refactoring. We further identify integration into continuous delivery pipelines and cost considerations as cross-cutting concerns. For each dimension, we analyze the underlying challenges and pose open research questions. These dimensions define a research agenda for advancing autonomous refactoring from isolated code improvements to system-level quality maintenance.

cs.SE

Di$^2$CycleSB: Towards High-Quality Unsupervised Nighttime Visibility Enhancement via Schr\"odinger Bridge Transformer

Light-effect contamination poses a significant challenge to nighttime visibility enhancement. Most methods suppress light effects by estimating and decomposing them through prior-driven regularization, yet they are often limited by hand-crafted priors and ill-posed nature of decomposition. This work proposes Di$^2$CycleSB, a unsupervised Cycle Schr\"odinger Bridge Transformer framework guided by dynamic integral image priors, for high-quality unsupervised nighttime visibility enhancement. Specifically, a novel light-effect estimator is introduced to parameterize Gaussian-like adaptive priors by aggregating dynamic integral image representations for non-uniform glow estimation. Then, we propose a prior-informed Generator that exploits light-effect representations to guide long-range dependency modeling within our specific Transformer blocks. We formulate light-effect suppression as a Schr\"odinger bridge problem and construct forward and backward bridges with cycle consistency constraints to achieve visually pleasing enhancement. Extensive experiments on real-world datasets demonstrate the remarkable effectiveness of our Di$^2$CycleSB in enhancing nighttime visibility. In particular, it achieves effective end-to-end light-effect suppression without any regularization constraints and image decomposition. The code and models are available at https://github.com/LHTcode/Di2CycleSB.

cs.CV

When Trust Meets Truth: Trust-Truth Separability in LLM-as-Judge

LLM-as-Judge systems can produce multi-dimensional evaluations, such as trustworthiness, reliability, and factuality, and these outputs are often interpreted as independent evidence. We test this assumption for a common pair of judgments: trust scoring and binary truth classification. On correctness-controlled QA, LLM judges align trust scores with truth verdicts more tightly than human behavioral reference, suggesting weaker separations between trust and truth judgment. We then apply stress tests by changing only source cues of identical QA between Human and AI. Source attribution shifts not only trust scores but also truth verdicts and logit-derived correct-side probabilities. Results show that current LLM-as-Judge protocols should not treat trust scores as independent evidence for truth judgments.

cs.AI

From Search Agents to Dissemination Interfaces: Understanding Human Trust in Health Information from Conversational Search

Large Language Models (LLMs) deployed through Conversational User Interfaces (CUIs) are transforming health information-seeking by offering immediate, interactive experiences compared to traditional search engines like Google. However, how trust is influenced by both the types of search agents and the interface used to disseminate the information remains underexplored. This research integrates two mixed-methods studies (lab sessions and interviews) to comprehensively explore trust perceptions in health information across different search agents and dissemination interfaces. In Study 1 (N=21), we investigated trust in health information sourced from ChatGPT and Google across three types of health-related search tasks. Results showed significantly higher trust in health information from ChatGPT, highlighting the promise of LLM-powered conversational search. Building on this, Study 2 (N=20) extended the investigation to explore how the dissemination interface influences trust in LLM-sourced health information by comparing three interfaces: text-based, speech-based, and embodied, all sourcing from the same LLM. Findings revealed significant trust variations across the dissemination interfaces. Interviews from both studies revealed key factors influencing trust in LLM-powered conversational search, including source credibility, participants' search autonomy, and prior knowledge as well as the interaction style and modality. Our findings highlight the potential of LLM-powered conversational search to transform health information-seeking, underscoring the interplay between the credible search agents and the thoughtfully designed dissemination interfaces in shaping trust. These insights are crucial for developing effective, trustworthy LLM-powered health tools to enhance the health information-seeking experience.

cs.HC

$\mathrm {U}_{q\tilde q}\mathfrak{sl}(2;\mathbb R)$ Turaev-Viro invariants for cusped $3$-manifolds

We define a family of Turaev-Viro type invariants for hyperbolic $3$-manifolds with cusp ends, extending the invariants introduced in \cite{LMSWY} for hyperbolic $3$-manifolds with totally geodesic boundary. These invariants are constructed from what we call the ideal $\mathrm{U}_{q\tilde q}\mathfrak{sl}(2;\mathbb R)$-$6j$ symbols, which are variants of the $6j$-symbols associated with the positive representations of the modular double of $\mathrm{U}_q\mathfrak{sl}(2;\mathbb R)$. We also prove that these invariants decay exponentially, with the exponential decay rate determined by the hyperbolic volume of the manifold.

math.GT

Bridging the Gap between Labeled and Unlabeled Data via Unified Flow with Feature Memory Bank

Although semi-supervised semantic segmentation ($\text{S}^4$) utilizes abundant unlabeled data to reduce manual labeling burdens, independent training of labeled and unlabeled data causes the former to dominate, which severely degrades pseudo-label quality. To address this challenges, we propose a novel remote sensing (RS) $\text{S}^4$ method via unified flow with feature memory bank (UFFM). Specifically, UFFM comprises two key innovations: unified flow (UF) and feature memory bank (FMB). The UF is a new training flow that generates less biased pseudo-labels by combining an external visual foundation model (VFM) with an RS domain teacher, and jointly optimizes labeled and pseudo-labeled data under a unified training objective. The FMB is a novel memory module for $\text{S}^4$ that dynamically updates class-specific features during training and reduces the feature discrepancy between labeled and unlabeled data through class-feature alignment. To verify the effectiveness of our model, we conduct extensive experiments on RS datasets. The experimental results show the superiority of our method over SOTA $\text{S}^4$ methods. Moreover, the results demonstrate the effectiveness of our contributions in bridging the optimization and feature representation gap between labeled and unlabeled data. Our code is released at \href{https://github.com/wangshanwen001/RS-UFFM}{https://github.com/wangshanwen001/RS-UFFM}.

cs.CV

DAC-Pose: Dual-Agent Collaborative Framework for Pose-Guided Human Generation

AI agents have emerged as a powerful new paradigm in generative image synthesis, enabling systems to perform complex semantic reasoning rather than passive pixel-level mapping. In pose-guided human generation, conventional methods inevitably produce severe visual artifacts under drastic viewpoint shifts, fundamentally because they lack the cognitive capacity to logically deduce unseen regions and model complex spatial deformations. To bridge this gap, we propose DAC-Pose, a novel agent-driven multimodal framework that reformulates single-view human generation as a collaborative dual-agent system. DAC-Pose integrates two complementary components, namely, the Prior Semantic Reasoning (PSR) agent and the Discrepancy-Aware Visual Encoding (DAVE) agent. Functioning as a cognitive engine, PSR utilizes collaborative reasoning to deduce the fine-grained attributes of unseen regions. Concurrently, acting as a specialized visual perception agent, DAVE quantifies and encodes viewpoint-induced spatial misalignments, continuously feeding robust spatial constraints back into the generative process. This autonomous feedback loop between semantic deduction and visual perception ensures high-fidelity detail synthesis. Extensive experiments on the DeepFashion and Market-1501 benchmarks validate the superiority of our agent-driven paradigm. Notably, DAC-Pose excels in preserving texture alignment and identity consistency under drastic viewpoint changes. The code is available at https://github.com/AIVRC/DAC-Pose.

cs.CV

Global Attention-Fused Image Cropping with Attention-Guided and Global-Aligned Crop Evaluator

Image cropping aims to improve image aesthetics by preserving important content within an appropriately composed region. However, most existing methods focus primarily on salient regions and therefore have limited sensitivity to the global relationships among the main image components. To address this limitation, we propose Global Attention-Fused Image Cropping (GAFIC), which consists of an Attention-Guided Feature Fusion (AGFF) and a Global-Aligned Crop Evaluator (GACE). AGFF aggregates the importance of local regions to construct a global representation that captures both image structure and local details. GACE aligns candidate crop features with this global representation, enabling crop evaluation to remain sensitive to boundary changes. We further combine three ranking losses across multiple scales to obtain accurate and stable crop scores. Extensive experiments on the GAIC and CPC datasets demonstrate that GAFIC outperforms existing image-cropping methods, particularly in terms of accuracy and stability. Unlike pixel-level retargeting methods such as seam carving, inpainting, and diffusion-based synthesis, GAFIC does not synthesize or modify the retained pixels; instead, it selects an aesthetically preferred crop from the source image, making it suitable for scenarios where pixel integrity and efficient batch processing are important. The source code is available at https://github.com/AIVRC/GAFIC.git.

cs.CV

HopRefusalBench: Diagnosing Refusal Failures in Search-Augmented Agents for Multi-Hop Reasoning

Search-augmented large language model agents are increasingly capable of solving knowledge-intensive tasks, but their behavior when a multi-hop question is fundamentally unanswerable remains poorly understood. Existing abstention benchmarks largely expose defects at the surface of single-hop queries and therefore cannot reveal failures that emerge only after valid intermediate reasoning and retrieval. We introduce HopRefusalBench, the first controlled benchmark of refusal within multi-hop search, comprising 889 unanswerable questions constructed from KILT-grounded entity paths. It crosses three causes of unanswerability (answer unknown, false premise, and underspecified context) with root, middle, and terminal topologies, making premise verification, intermediate-bridge validation, and terminal stopping separately observable. We further propose a final-outcome taxonomy spanning target-aware refusal, pseudo-refusal, hallucinated completion, and search-budget exhaustion, together with source-aware trajectory metrics for post-trigger continuation and token waste. Across ten frontier proprietary and open-weight models in search-augmented mode, the best model achieves a target-aware correct halting rate (TCHR) of only 42.9%. Root and middle items are consistently harder than terminal items, and all models attain their highest TCHR on false premises and their lowest on underspecified questions. Yet when pooled across categories, 84.7--98.4% of each model's explicit refusal-like responses identify the correct rationale, localizing the main bottleneck to committing to an appropriate non-answer; failed trajectories instead diverge into hallucination or search-budget exhaustion. These results establish refusal in multi-hop search as a consequential evaluation problem and provide a foundation for diagnosing and improving the reliability of search-augmented agents.

cs.CL

EviSD: Evidence-Conditioned Self-Distillation for Search-Augmented Agents

Outcome-based reinforcement learning enables search-augmented language agents to learn from verifiable final answers, but its trajectory-level credit cannot distinguish the contributions of individual actions in a multi-turn search process. We propose EviSD, an evidence-conditioned self-distillation framework that uses instance-level supporting evidence as privileged information for search actions and golden answers as complementary privilege for answer actions. During training, the student samples actions from the original context, while the same model re-scores them as a privileged teacher under an action-aligned context. EviSD converts the detached teacher--student gap into a bounded correction to the outcome-derived GRPO advantage and applies it only to generated action spans. This design localizes privileged guidance while preserving the update direction determined by the outcome reward, without an auxiliary distillation objective or any change at inference time. Across seven question-answering benchmarks and three backbones spanning model scales and generations, EviSD achieves the highest macro-average Exact Match in all evaluated settings, outperforming the strongest compared methods by 1.3--2.3 points while modulating only 6.7%--15.1% of response tokens. Code is available at https://github.com/JiananXie/EviSD.

cs.CL

Hermes - Towards an Optimal High-Performance Algorithm for Cosmic Statistics of Large Data Sets

We present Hermes, an in situ multiresolution framework for efficient and flexible measurements of cosmic large-scale-structure statistics from discrete catalogues. Hermes reconstructs a catalogue as a continuous density field in a compact scaling-function basis and replaces explicit counting of particle tuples with algebraic operations among window-filtered fields. Standard binning schemes for counts-in-cells, two-point and higher-order correlation functions are thereby expressed through choices of window functions, while new statistics can be constructed by modifying the kernels without redesigning the estimator. We introduce PyHermes, an open-source Python implementation combining multiresolution reconstruction, FFT-based convolution, MPI/thread parallelism, and GPU acceleration. It supports isotropic and anisotropic two-point statistics, marked correlations, standard and multipole three-point functions, filtered statistics, and differential operators for derived physical fields. Tests with cosmological N-body halo catalogues demonstrate a range of clustering measurements and quantify the computational efficiency and scalability of the approach. By separating field representation from statistical windows, a single reconstructed field can be reused for many standard and customised measurements, making Hermes well suited to large data sets from current and future galaxy surveys.

astro-ph.CO

Uplink Positioning for PASS in Multipath Environments

Pinching-antenna systems (PASS) enhance wireless propagation by activating or placing pinching antennas (PAs) near users. Therefore, accurate uplink positioning is essential for efficient communication. In this paper, an uplink multi-carrier positioning framework is established for PASS in multipath environments. Matrix pencil (MP)-based and low-complexity Rank-1 ranging algorithms are proposed to estimate the distances between the PAs and the user. For the MP-based ranging algorithm, the line-of-sight (LoS) component is separated from non-line-of-sight components by exploiting the shift-invariance property of the Hankel matrix, thereby enabling accurate distance estimation. For the Rank-1 ranging algorithm, the dominant LoS delay is directly isolated through truncated singular value decomposition, thereby avoiding matrix inversions. Subsequently, a two-stage weighted nonlinear least-squares (WNLS) positioning algorithm is designed to estimate the three-dimensional user position. To gain further insights, a comprehensive theoretical performance analysis of the proposed ranging and positioning algorithms is conducted. The closed-form ranging variances and position error bound (PEB) are derived to reveal the error propagation mechanism. Numerical results demonstrate that: i) The MP-based algorithm achieves higher accuracy and robustness than the Rank-1-based algorithm, while the Rank-1-based algorithm has lower computational complexity. ii) The positioning error of the MP-based algorithm follows the same trend as the derived PEB, whereas the Rank-1 algorithm exhibits an error floor due to multipath bias. iii) The positioning accuracy of the MP algorithm improves as the number of subcarriers increases.

eess.SP

Beyond Resolved Rate: A Non-Functional Quality Study

Repository-level coding benchmarks typically measure progress in model capability by comparing the resolved rates of later and earlier models. However, this focus overlooks whether the non-functional quality of their generated patches has also changed across model generations. This study investigates whether later models produce functionally correct patches with better non-functional characteristics than earlier models on comparable repository-level repair tasks. We conducted two case studies involving four Claude and DeepSeek models on SWE-bench Lite. Using the same SWE-agent functional repair setting, we evaluated the generated patches with CodeQL, CodeScene, CPU time, and peak memory. Our primary analysis compared the models on commonly resolved instances. The static analysis results showed that most CodeQL paired differences were zero and that no CodeQL or CodeScene comparison remained significant after Holm correction. CPU time differences were small and inconsistent across model families, while peak memory usage was slightly higher for the later models under the benchmark test workload, with small absolute differences. Differences in individual CodeQL rules and CodeScene categories varied across model families and did not survive multiple-comparison correction. Overall, later models resolved more instances but showed no consistent improvement in the measured non-functional indicators on tasks solved by both models. Through this study, we hope to encourage a more comprehensive evaluation of models' practical software engineering capabilities.

cs.SE

On the Blockage Effect in Pinching-Antenna Systems (PASS)

Pinching-antenna systems (PASS) offer considerable potential for wireless communications due to their unique ability to dynamically reconfigure radiation positions along a waveguide. However, the performance of PASS remains a critical challenge in the presence of random line-of-sight (LoS) blockage, leading to significant attenuation and even communication outages. In this paper, the performance of PASS in the presence of LoS blockage is investigated from the perspective of stochastic geometry. Obstacles are modeled through a homogeneous Poisson point process (PPP), where the geometric dimensions, numbers, and positions are treated as random variables. To conduct a concrete characterization of LoS blockage, the random-height-and-random-radius (RHRR) blockage model and the deterministic-height-and-deterministic-radius (DHDR) blockage model are proposed. In particular, closed-form analytical and asymptotic expressions for the outage probability are obtained, along with analytical and approximate expressions for the ergodic rate. Our simulation results reveal that denser obstacle environments or statistically larger obstacles substantially increase the probability of LoS blockage and degrade the system performance. Moreover, owing to its ability to dynamically reposition PAs, PASS can consistently outperform conventional antenna systems in the presence of LoS blockage.

eess.SP

RSGPNet: Geometric Prompting for Remote Sensing Open-Vocabulary Semantic Segmentation

Open-vocabulary semantic segmentation (OVSS) enables text-guided segmentation of unseen objects, breaking fixed-class limitations to achieve open-world understanding. However, existing OVSS methods primarily focus on modifying the CLIP attention mechanism, which still suffers from unstable local segmentation for remote sensing (RS) domain. To address these limitations, we propose RSGPNet, a training-free geometric prompting framework for RS OVSS that refines segmentation by leveraging object geometric areas and consistency constraints. Specifically, RSGPNet comprises three core modules: a Text-guided Coarse Mask module (TCM), a Geometric Re-prompting Module (GRP), and a Coarse-to-fine Consistency Verification Mechanism (CVM). TCM utilizes text prompts and the input image to construct initial coarse segmentation masks. GRP then converts these coarse masks into geometric box prompts, feeding them back into the segmentation model to generate refined masks. Finally, CVM employs consistency computation to prevent prompting from reinforcing erroneous regions. They allow the model to improve segmentation accuracy in complex areas, such as category boundaries. Extensive experiments on RS datasets demonstrate that RSGPNet significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods across both quantitative and qualitative metrics while exhibiting excellent interpretability. The code is released at \href{https://github.com/wangshanwen001/RSGPNet}{https://github.com/wangshanwen001/RSGPNet}.

cs.CV

When LLM Rationales Become User-Facing: Effects on Trust Perception, Decision-Making, and Gaze Behaviors

Large language models (LLMs) increasingly show step-by-step reasoning rationales alongside their answers, turning reasoning from an internal model capability into a user-facing interface feature. Yet it is unclear whether such rationales help users judge when trust is warranted or merely persuade through fluent reasoning. We address this gap through the lens of auditable trust calibration: user-facing rationales should help people inspect whether an answer is warranted by evidence. We test this framing in factual verification through two linked studies. Study 1, an online experiment (N=68), manipulated rationale presentation format (instant, delayed, on demand), rationale correctness (correct, incorrect), and certainty framing (none, certain, uncertain). Study 2, a controlled eye-tracking study (N=54), examined how no-, correct-, and incorrect-rationale conditions were associated with users' trust, decision-making, and eye-movement patterns. Study 1 showed no reliable presentation-format effects; instead, rationale correctness and certainty framing influenced the trust in the information, trust in the LLM system, and decision confidence. In Study 2, incorrect rationales drew more attention to the supporting evidence and larger pupil diameter while the rationale was viewed, consistent with greater cognitive effort. Incorrect rationales also lowered trust in LLM system relative to showing no rationale, whereas the no-rationale difference was weaker for trust in information. A post-hoc predictive modeling analysis of gaze data from Study 2 further showed that gaze features carried predictive signal for trust- and decision-related user states. This work challenges the assumption that more reasoning is always better and supports rationale designs that are selective, linked to evidence, calibrated in how they express certainty, and easier to verify.

cs.HC

Uniqueness of bound states to the logarithmic Schr\"odinger equation

This paper studies the uniqueness of bound states for the problem \Delta u + u\log u ^2=0, \quad u\in H^1(\RN), \quad n\geq 2, which arises from the logarithmic Schr\"odinger equation. We prove that for every integer $k\geq 1$, there exists a unique radial solution $u(r)=u(|x|)$ that has exactly $k$ simple zeros for $r>0$. This resolves an open problem posed by Troy [{Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal.} 222 (2016), 1581--1600] and confirms the Berestycki-Lions conjecture for the logarithmic nonlinearity. The proof combines the shooting method with suitable auxiliary functions introduced by Tang [{Invent. math.} 243 (2026), 245--291]. A major difficulty arises from the singular behavior of the nonlinearity $f(u)=u \log u^2$ at origin. We overcome it by establishing asymptotic convergence and sharp decay rates at infinity for any ground state or bound state. More precisely, every such solution satisfies \lim_{r\to\infty}\frac{ u'(r)}{u(r) \sqrt{\abs{ \log u^2(r)}}}=\lim_{r\to\infty}\frac{u'(r)}{ru(r)} = -1, \quad \limsup_{r\to\infty}|u(r)|e^{(\frac12-\epsilon)r^2}<\infty, ~~\forall \epsilon \in ( 0,\frac{1}{2}). These asymptotic behaviors are of independent interest and may be useful for other problems involving logarithmic nonlinearities.

math.AP

GAPD: Gold-Action Policy Distillation for Agentic Reinforcement Learning in Knowledge Base Question Answering

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a natural fit for agentic knowledge base question answering (KBQA), where a model must issue executable actions, observe knowledge-base feedback, and eventually return an answer. However, current RL-based KBQA systems mainly optimize sparse rewards from the final answer, leaving intermediate action errors weakly supervised. This is especially limiting for logical-form annotated KBQA benchmarks: gold logical forms can be converted into executable action sequences, but existing pipelines use them mainly for warm-start data construction rather than for on-policy RL updates. We propose GAPD, a training-time Gold-Action Policy Distillation framework that adds dense token-level guidance to outcome-based RL. To align gold actions with on-policy student rollouts, GAPD uses MID-ANCHOR MATCHING: it treats the intermediate entities reached during student exploration and gold execution as state anchors, and matches student states to gold states through these explored entity sets. The current policy conditioned on this aligned gold action serves as a stop-gradient teacher, whose token distribution is distilled back to the ordinary student policy over generated action-token spans. GAPD consistently surpasses the current state of the art on WebQSP, GrailQA, and GraphQ.

cs.CL