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Yan Liu

Publications and source records attributed to Yan Liu.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

SHERLOCK: Towards Dynamic Knowledge Adaptation in LLM-enhanced E-commerce Risk Management

Effective e-commerce risk management requires in-depth case investigations to identify emerging fraud patterns in highly adversarial environments. However, manual investigation typically requires analyzing the associations and couplings among multi-source heterogeneous data, a labor-intensive process that limits efficiency. While Large Language Models (LLMs) show promise in automating these analyses, their deployment is hindered by the complexity of risk scenarios and the sparsity of long-tail domain knowledge. To address these challenges, we propose Sherlock, a framework that integrates structured domain knowledge with LLM-based reasoning through three core modules. First, we construct a domain Knowledge Base (KB) by distilling structured expertise from heterogeneous knowledge sources. Second, we design a two-stage retrieval-augmented generation strategy tailored for case investigation, which combines input contextual augmentation with a Reflect & Refine module to fully leverage the KB for improved analysis quality. Finally, we develop an integrated platform for operations and annotation to drive a self-evolving data flywheel. By combining real-time hotfixes through KB updates with periodic logic alignment via post-training, we facilitate continuous system evolution to counteract adversarial drifts. Online A/B tests at JD dot com demonstrate that Sherlock achieves an 82% Expert Acceptance Rate (EAR) and a 386.7% increase in daily investigation throughput. An additional 90-day evaluation shows that the flywheel successfully recovers from performance decay caused by changing tactics twice, raising the EAR ceiling by around 3.5% through autonomous model updates.

cs.IR↗

Aligning Shared and Routed Experts for Cross-Subject EEG Generalization

Cross-subject EEG generalization is challenging due to substantial heterogeneity across subjects. Existing methods typically learn either a shared subject-invariant model or multiple subject-specialized experts, but these two paradigms fail in complementary ways: the former may over-reduce subject-specific discriminative signals, while the latter may under-reduce transferable structure. We show that their suitability depends on the reducibility cost of branch-specific functions to branch-invariant ones, and we further provide a theory-to-method mapping that instantiates alignment principles in cross-subject EEG learning. Based on this insight, we propose Shared-Routed Expert Alignment (SREA), a collaborative framework that couples a shared expert for reducible invariant functions with routed experts for irreducible subject-specific functions. SREA trains the shared branch with joint embedding over augmented temporal neighbors, the routed branch with prototype-based sparse routing and expert specialization, and both branches with numerically stable mutual-guided reweighting based on cross-branch learnability gaps. Experiments on seven public EEG benchmarks across different tasks show that SREA consistently outperforms state-of-the-art methods and EEG foundation models.

cs.CE↗

A tunable feedback-controlled magnetic trap for a magnet in free fall

Ferromagnets in free space are predicted to exhibit pure Larmor precession at near-zero magnetic fields and provide exceptional sensitivity for magnetometry and gyroscopy. Notably, pure Larmor precession has not been observed in a macroscopic ferromagnetic particle, despite its fundamental importance and potential for probing relativistic effects and dark-matter interactions. Realizing such dynamics requires true free fall to eliminate clamping losses and trap-induced systematics. A central challenge is designing a tunable trap that is weak enough to permit near-free evolution yet robust enough to withstand the disturbances of launch and release. Here, we propose and demonstrate a novel master proportional-integral-differential magnetic trap (MPIDMT) combining a PID-controlled coil system with a master control coil system. Implemented in the third-generation drop tower - Einstein-Elevator, during the microgravity phase the system stably levitates a ferromagnetic particle against shock accelerations up to 1.5 g and resolves its motion in both a low-field (0.4 g) configuration and in pure free fall. These results represent a key step toward free-fall ferromagnetic magnetometry, the long-sought direct observation of macroscopic Larmor precession, and future space-based experiments.

physics.atom-ph↗

Quantum scars from holographic boson stars

Quantum many-body scars are atypical nonthermal states embedded in the chaotic spectrum that evade conventional ergodicity. We propose the asymptotically AdS mini-boson star as a holographic candidate for scar-like states. Their spectrum exhibits random-matrix signatures of chaos while supporting embedded integrable spectral branches. The whole holographic system, including black holes, is generically chaotic with most eigenstates satisfying the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis; in contrast, the boson star macrostate probes a near-integrable subsector within this chaotic spectrum, signaling scarred spectral structures. Boson stars further display anomalously low entanglement relative to black holes at the same energy density, and also robust revivals in Krylov complexity, revealing nonergodic dynamics. These spectral, entanglement, and dynamical diagnostics provide unified evidence for holographic quantum scars in a self-gravitating system. Our work suggests a new connection between many-body scar physics, quantum chaos, and horizonless gravitational dynamics.

hep-th↗

Revisiting the Reliability of Language Models in Instruction-Following

Advanced LLMs have achieved near-ceiling instruction-following accuracy on benchmarks such as IFEval. However, these impressive scores do not necessarily translate to reliable services in real-world use, where users often vary their phrasing, contextual framing, and task formulations. In this paper, we study nuance-oriented reliability: whether models exhibit consistent competence across cousin prompts that convey analogous user intents but with subtle nuances. To quantify this, we introduce a new metric, reliable@k, and develop an automated pipeline that generates high-quality cousin prompts via data augmentation. Building upon this, we construct IFEval++ for systematic evaluation. Across 20 proprietary and 26 open-source LLMs, we find that current models exhibit substantial insufficiency in nuance-oriented reliability -- their performance can drop by up to 61.8% with nuanced prompt modifications. What's more, we characterize it and explore three potential improvement recipes. Our findings highlight nuance-oriented reliability as a crucial yet underexplored next step toward more dependable and trustworthy LLM behavior. Our code and benchmark are accessible: https://github.com/jianshuod/IFEval-pp.

cs.SE↗

Safe Evolution with Circuit Anchors

In biological evolution, unconstrained mutation can lead to catastrophic outcomes: organisms may evolve enhanced capabilities while losing essential functions for survival. Nature's solution is \textit{developmental constraints}, where core regulatory genes remain anchored while peripheral genes adapt freely. We observe that current self-evolution algorithms for large language models lack analogous constraints. They optimize purely for capability, implicitly assuming safety will be preserved. Our experiments reveal this assumption to be dangerously wrong: models can \textit{misevolve} into powerful yet dangerous entities. Inspired by how Hox genes anchor body structure across $500$ million years of evolution, we propose \textbf{Circuit-Anchored Evolution (CAE)}. Using mechanistic interpretability, we identify a tiny \textit{safety circuit}, comprising less than $2$\% of model features, that causally mediates safety behaviors. We anchor this circuit during evolution, constraining it within a small displacement bound while allowing the remaining features to evolve freely. This mirrors the biological principle of \textit{evolvability with constraint}: preserving what is essential while adapting what is peripheral. Experiments across $3$ model families and two evolution algorithms demonstrate that CAE achieves superior safety preservation with minimal capability loss, substantially outperforming explicit reward-based constraints in both effectiveness and efficiency. Just as developmental constraints prevent biological evolution from producing nonviable organisms, circuit anchoring prevents model evolution from producing capable but dangerous systems.

cs.CL↗

Think Thrice Before You Speak: Dual knowledge-enhanced Theory-of-Mind Reasoning for Persuasive Agents

Persuasive dialogue requires reasoning about others' latent mental states, a capability known as Theory of Mind (ToM). However, due to reliance on simple prompting strategies and insufficient ToM knowledge, existing LLMs often fail to capture the intrinsic dependencies among mental states, leading to fragmented representations and unstable reasoning. To address these challenges, we introduce the ToM-based Persuasive Dialogue (ToM-PD) task, grounded in the Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) framework, which explicitly models the sequential dependencies among mental states in multi-turn dialogues. To facilitate research on this task, we construct a large-scale annotated dataset, ToM-based Broad Persuasive Dialogues (ToM-BPD), capturing fine-grained mental states and corresponding persuasive strategies. We further propose Think Thrice Before You Speak (TTBYS), a knowledge-enhanced stepwise reasoning framework that leverages both explicit and implicit prior experiences to improve LLMs' inference of desires, beliefs, and persuasive strategies. Experimental results demonstrate that Qwen3-8B equipped with TTBYS outperforms GPT-5 by 1.20%, 22.80%, and 16.97% in predicting desires, beliefs, and persuasive strategies, respectively. Case studies further show that our approach enhances interpretability and consistency in reasoning.

cs.AI↗

Engineering Hybrid Resonances in Nanophotonics

Hybridization of resonances is known to overcome inherent limitations of individual systems, enabling advanced functionalities and applications. Here we discuss hybrid plasmonic-Mie resonators that emerged recently as a promising direction in advancing nanophotonic structures by synergistically combining the strong near-field enhancement of plasmonic components with the low-loss, multipolar resonances of dielectric Mie elements. We review the recent progress in the field, encompassing the fundamental physical principles, structural design strategies, material platforms, computational optimization approaches, and representative device implementations. Our discussion starts by evaluating the complementary characteristics of plasmonic and Mie resonances followed by a description of the coupling between these resonances in order to boost light-matter interactions. Afterward, we explore the performance of efficient hybrid resonators for different application areas. Apart from the conventional metal-dielectric systems, we consider the recent class of epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) materials, which can provide unique advantages in terms of field localization, phase engineering, and energy flow management in the vicinity of zero-permittivity conditions, offering more flexibility in designing hybrid nano-optical devices. Lastly, we point out potential research avenues aiming to improve functional and efficient nanophotonic devices, especially those involving emerging topological material systems, such as Sb2Te3, Bi2Te3, Bi2Se3, combining plasmonic amplification, dielectric confinement, and spin-dependent optical behavior.

physics.optics↗

Brain-to-Image Retrieval and Reconstruction via Multimodal EEG Alignment

We present a brain-to-image system that decodes visual stimuli from EEG signals recorded during natural image viewing. Our system addresses two tasks: (1) EEG-to-image retrieval, which ranks the correct stimulus image among 200 candidates given an EEG segment, and (2) EEG-to-image reconstruction, which generates an image consistent with the perceived stimulus. For retrieval, we implement a multi-level blurring approach improved with biologically inspired EVNet features and trained with the InfoNCE loss. Evaluated over 10 random seeds for a single subject, the retrieval model achieves a mean final-epoch Top-1 accuracy of 86.30% and Top-5 accuracy of 98.55%. For reconstruction, we implement CognitionCapturerPro, which aligns EEG representations to multi-modal CLIP embeddings, including image, text, depth, and edge embeddings, and synthesizes images with SDXL-Turbo conditioned via IP-Adapter. Averaged over 10 seeds, the reconstruction model achieves a CLIP score of 0.903 using ViT-H-14, a CLIP score of 0.870 using ViT-L/14, and an SSIM of 0.409. These results demonstrate the feasibility of decoding rich visual representations from EEG signals using modern multi-modal alignment and generative modeling techniques.

cs.CV↗

Trustworthiness in Retrieval-Augmented Generation Systems: A Survey

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has quickly grown into a pivotal paradigm in the development of Large Language Models (LLMs). Although existing research mainly emphasizes accuracy and efficiency, the trustworthiness of RAG systems remains insufficiently explored. RAG can improve LLM reliability by grounding responses in external and up-to-date knowledge, reducing hallucinations. However, unreliable retrieval or improper knowledge utilization may still lead to undesirable outputs. To address these concerns, we propose a unified framework, Trust-RAG Compass, that assesses the trustworthiness of RAG systems across six key dimensions: factuality, robustness, fairness, transparency, accountability, and privacy. Within this framework, we provide a thorough review of the existing literature along each dimension. Furthermore, we introduce an evaluation benchmark, TRC Bench (\underline{T}rust-\underline{R}AG \underline{C}ompass \underline{Bench}mark), regarding the six dimensions and conduct comprehensive evaluations for a variety of proprietary and open-source models. Our results shed light on the performance gaps between different types of LLMs across varying dimensions of trustworthiness. Finally, we identify key challenges and promising directions for future research based on our findings. Through this work, we aim to provide a structured foundation for subsequent investigations and practical guidance for developing trustworthy RAG systems in real-world scenarios.

cs.IR↗

"Someone Hid It": Query-Agnostic Black-Box Attacks on LLM-Based Retrieval

Large language models (LLMs) have been serving as effective backbones for retrieval systems, including Retrieval-Augmentation-Generation (RAG), Dense Information Retriever (IR), and Agent Memory Retrieval. Recent studies have demonstrated that such LLM-based Retrieval (LLMR) is vulnerable to adversarial attacks, which manipulates documents by token-level injections and enables adversaries to either boost or diminish these documents in retrieval tasks. However, existing attack studies mainly (1) presume a known query is given to the attacker, and (2) highly rely on access to the victim model's parameters or interactions, which are hardly accessible in real-world scenarios, leading to limited validity. To further explore the secure risks of LLMR, we propose a practical black-box attack method that generates transferable injection tokens based on zero-shot surrogate LLMs without need of victim queries or victim models knowledge. The effectiveness of our attack raises such a robustness issue that similar effects may arise from benign or unintended document edits in the real world. To achieve our attack, we first establish a theoretical framework of LLMR and empirically verify it. Under the framework, we simulate the transferable attack as a min-max problem, and propose an adversarial learning mechanism that finds optimal adversarial tokens with learnable query samples. Our attack is validated to be effective on benchmark datasets across popular LLM retrievers.

cs.CR↗

PG-LRF: Physiology-Guided Latent Rectified Flow for Electro-Hemodynamic PPG-to-ECG Generation

Electrocardiography (ECG) is the clinical standard for cardiac assessment but requires dedicated hardware that does not scale to daily-life monitoring. Photoplethysmography (PPG) is ubiquitous in wearables but lacks ECG-specific diagnostic morphology and is corrupted by motion and sensor noise. PPG-to-ECG generation aims to bridge this gap by recovering electrical morphology and timing from peripheral pulse signals. However, existing methods largely rely on statistical alignment and data-driven generation. They fail to explicitly structure the latent space around physiology-aware electro-hemodynamic factors and lack constraints from forward physiological dynamics. To address these challenges, we propose PG-LRF, a physiology-guided latent rectified flow framework. PG-LRF introduces an electro-hemodynamic simulator that co-models ECG and PPG through shared cardiac phase dynamics. Guided by this simulator, a Physiology-Aware AutoEncoder learns a structured electro-hemodynamic latent space. Then we integrate this simulator guidance into a PPG-conditioned latent rectified flow, enforcing ECG-side morphology consistency and ECG-to-PPG forward hemodynamic consistency during generative transport. Experiments on the large-scale MC-MED dataset demonstrate that PG-LRF significantly improves PPG-to-ECG generation and downstream cardiovascular disease classification, proving its ability to generate ECGs that are both signal-faithful and physiologically plausible under the ECG-to-PPG hemodynamic pathway

eess.SP↗

A ferroelectric junction transistor memory made from switchable van der Waals p-n heterojunctions

Van der Waals (vdW) p-n heterojunctions are important building blocks for advanced electronics and optoelectronics, in which high-quality heterojunctions essentially determine device performances or functionalities. Creating tunable depletion regions with substantially suppressed leakage currents presents huge challenges, but is crucial for heterojunction applications. Here, by using band-aligned p-type SnSe and n-type ferroelectric α-In2Se3 as a model, we report near-ideal multifunctional vdW p-n heterojunctions with small reverse leakage currents (0.1 pA) and a desired diode ideality factor (1.95). We realize ferroelectric-tuned band alignment with a giant barrier modulation of 900 meV. Based on such tunable heterojunctions, we propose and demonstrate a fundamental different memory device termed ferroelectric junction field-effect transistor memory, which shows large memory windows (1.8 V), ultrafast speed (100 ns), high operation temperature (393 K), and low cycle-to-cycle variation (2%). Additionally, the reliable synaptic characteristics of these memory devices promise low-power neuromorphic computing. Our work provides a new device platform with switchable memory heterojunctions, applicable to high performance brain-inspired electronics and optoelectronics.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

Extending Precipitation Nowcasting Horizons via Spectral Fusion of Radar Observations and Foundation Model Priors

Precipitation nowcasting is critical for disaster mitigation and aviation safety. However, radar-only models frequently suffer from a lack of large-scale atmospheric context, leading to performance degradation at longer lead times. While integrating meteorological variables predicted by weather foundation models offers a potential remedy, existing architectures fail to reconcile the profound representational heterogeneities between radar imagery and meteorological data. To bridge this gap, we propose PW-FouCast, a novel frequency-domain fusion framework that leverages Pangu-Weather forecasts as spectral priors within a Fourier-based backbone. Our architecture introduces three key innovations: (i) Pangu-Weather-guided Frequency Modulation to align spectral magnitudes and phases with meteorological priors; (ii) Frequency Memory to correct phase discrepancies and preserve temporal evolution; and (iii) Inverted Frequency Attention to reconstruct high-frequency details typically lost in spectral filtering. Extensive experiments on the SEVIR and MeteoNet benchmarks demonstrate that PW-FouCast achieves state-of-the-art performance, effectively extending the reliable forecast horizon while maintaining structural fidelity. Our code is available at https://github.com/Onemissed/PW-FouCast.

cs.LG↗

Analytical studies on 3D hairy rotating black hole interiors

We present an analytical study of the interior structure of hairy rotating black holes in three-dimensional Einstein gravity, minimally coupled to a complex scalar field with a super-exponential potential. The interior dynamics of these black holes are characterized by an infinite sequence of Kasner epochs, separated by inversion and transitions, each of which admits an analytical description. We derive an explicit analytical expression for this infinite sequence of epochs. At late interior times, the geometry evolves into a curvature singularity, despite the local resemblance of each Kasner epoch to a regular Milne universe on a circle. These results reveal an interior structure richer and more complex than that of its 4D static black hole counterparts.

hep-th↗

Beyond Compliance: A Resistance-Informed Motivation Reasoning Framework for Challenging Psychological Client Simulation

Psychological client simulators have emerged as a scalable solution for training and evaluating counselor trainees and psychological LLMs. Yet existing simulators exhibit unrealistic over-compliance, leaving counselors underprepared for the challenging behaviors common in real-world practice. To bridge this gap, we present ResistClient, which systematically models challenging client behaviors grounded in Client Resistance Theory by integrating external behaviors with underlying motivational mechanisms. To this end, we propose Resistance-Informed Motivation Reasoning (RIMR), a two-stage training framework. First, RIMR mitigates compliance bias via supervised fine-tuning on RPC, a large-scale resistance-oriented psychological conversation dataset covering diverse client profiles. Second, beyond surface-level response imitation, RIMR models psychologically coherent motivation reasoning before response generation, jointly optimizing motivation authenticity and response consistency via process-supervised reinforcement learning. Extensive automatic and expert evaluations show that ResistClient substantially outperforms existing simulators in challenge fidelity, behavioral plausibility, and reasoning coherence. Moreover, ResistClient facilities evaluation of psychological LLMs under challenging conditions, offering new optimization directions for mental health dialogue systems.

cs.AI↗

TS-Reasoner: Domain-Oriented Time Series Inference Agents for Reasoning and Automated Analysis

Time series analysis is crucial in real-world applications, yet traditional methods focus on isolated tasks only, and recent studies on time series reasoning remain limited to either single-step inference or are constrained to natural language answers. In this work, we introduce TS-Reasoner, a domain-specialized agent designed for multi-step time series inference. By integrating large language model (LLM) reasoning with domain-specific computational tools and an error feedback loop, TS-Reasoner enables domain-informed, constraint-aware analytical workflows that combine symbolic reasoning with precise numerical analysis. We assess the system's capabilities along two axes: (1) fundamental time series understanding assessed by TimeSeriesExam and (2) complex, multi-step inference evaluated by a newly proposed dataset designed to test both compositional reasoning and computational precision in time series analysis. Experiments show that our approach outperforms standalone general-purpose LLMs in both basic time series concept understanding as well as the multi-step time series inference task, highlighting the promise of domain-specialized agents for automating real-world time series reasoning and analysis.

cs.LG↗

Cardinality is Not Enough: Super Host Detection via Segmented Cardinality Estimation

Accurately detecting super host that establishes connections to a large number of distinct peers is significant for mitigating web attacks and ensuring high quality of web service. Existing sketch-based approaches estimate the number of distinct connections called flow cardinality according to full IP addresses, while ignoring the fact that a malicious or victim super host often communicates with hosts within the same subnet, resulting in high false positive rates and low accuracy. Though hierarchical-structure based approaches could capture flow cardinality in subnet, they inherently suffer from high memory usage. To address these limitations, we propose SegSketch, a segmented cardinality estimation approach that employs a lightweight halved-segment hashing strategy to infer common prefix lengths of IP addresses, and estimates cardinality within subnet to enhance detection accuracy under constrained memory size. Experiments driven by real-world traces demonstrate that, SegSketch improves F1-Score by up to 8.04x compared to state-of-the-art solutions, particularly under small memory budgets.

cs.NI↗