arXiv subjects

Yao Wang

Publications and source records attributed to Yao Wang.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

arXiv2025

Optimal control on open quantum systems and application to non-Condon photo-induced electron transfer

In this work, we develop an optimal control theory on open quantum system and its environment, and exemplify the method with the application to the non-Condon photo-induced electron transfer (PET) in condensed phase. This method utilizes the dissipaton theory, proposed by Yan in 2014 for open quantum systems, which provides an exact description of the dissipative system while also enables rigorous characterization and control of environmental hybridization modes, fully taking into account the non-perturbative and non-Markovian effects. Leveraging the advantage of the dissipaton phase-space algebra, we present in this communication the theoretical strategy for optimal control on both system and environment simultaneously. The control protocol is successfully demonstrated on PET for the environment-targeted-control facilitated transfer. This work sheds the light on manipulating open systems dynamics via polarized environment.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Reconfigurable miniaturized computational spectrometer enabled by photoelastic effect

Miniatured computational spectrometers, distinguished by their compact size and lightweight, have shown great promise for on-chip and portable applications in the fields of healthcare, environmental monitoring, food safety, and industrial process monitoring. However, the common miniaturization strategies predominantly rely on advanced micro-nano fabrication and complex material engineering, limiting their scalability and affordability. Here, we present a broadband miniaturized computational spectrometer (ElastoSpec) by leveraging the photoelastic effect for easy-to-prepare and reconfigurable implementations. A single computational photoelastic spectral filter, with only two polarizers and a plastic sheet, is designed to be integrated onto the top of a CMOS sensor for snapshot spectral acquisition. The different spectral modulation units are directly generated from different spatial locations of the filter, due to the photoelastic-induced chromatic polarization effect of the plastic sheet. We experimentally demonstrate that ElastoSpec offers excellent reconstruction accuracy for the measurement of both simple narrowband and complex spectra. It achieves a full width at half maximum (FWHM) error of approximately 0.2 nm for monochromatic inputs, and maintains a mean squared error (MSE) value on the order of 10^-3 with only 10 spectral modulation units. Furthermore, we develop a reconfigurable strategy for enhanced spectra sensing performance through the flexibility in optimizing the modulation effectiveness and the number of spectral modulation units. This work avoids the need for complex micro-nano fabrication and specialized materials for the design of computational spectrometers, thus paving the way for the development of simple, cost-effective, and scalable solutions for on-chip and portable spectral sensing devices.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

TeSO: Representing and Compressing 3D Point Cloud Scenes with Textured Surfel Octree

3D visual content streaming is a key technology for emerging 3D telepresence and AR/VR applications. One fundamental element underlying the technology is a versatile 3D representation that is capable of producing high-quality renders and can be efficiently compressed at the same time. Existing 3D representations like point clouds, meshes and 3D Gaussians each have limitations in terms of rendering quality, surface definition, and compressibility. In this paper, we present the Textured Surfel Octree (TeSO), a novel 3D representation that is built from point clouds but addresses the aforementioned limitations. It represents a 3D scene as cube-bounded surfels organized on an octree, where each surfel is further associated with a texture patch. By approximating a smooth surface with a large surfel at a coarser level of the octree, it reduces the number of primitives required to represent the 3D scene, and yet retains the high-frequency texture details through the texture map attached to each surfel. We further propose a compression scheme to encode the geometry and texture efficiently, leveraging the octree structure. The proposed textured surfel octree combined with the compression scheme achieves higher rendering quality at lower bit-rates compared to multiple point cloud and 3D Gaussian-based baselines.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2025

Generalized Low-Rank Matrix Contextual Bandits with Graph Information

The matrix contextual bandit (CB), as an extension of the well-known multi-armed bandit, is a powerful framework that has been widely applied in sequential decision-making scenarios involving low-rank structure. In many real-world scenarios, such as online advertising and recommender systems, additional graph information often exists beyond the low-rank structure, that is, the similar relationships among users/items can be naturally captured through the connectivity among nodes in the corresponding graphs. However, existing matrix CB methods fail to explore such graph information, and thereby making them difficult to generate effective decision-making policies. To fill in this void, we propose in this paper a novel matrix CB algorithmic framework that builds upon the classical upper confidence bound (UCB) framework. This new framework can effectively integrate both the low-rank structure and graph information in a unified manner. Specifically, it involves first solving a joint nuclear norm and matrix Laplacian regularization problem, followed by the implementation of a graph-based generalized linear version of the UCB algorithm. Rigorous theoretical analysis demonstrates that our procedure outperforms several popular alternatives in terms of cumulative regret bound, owing to the effective utilization of graph information. A series of synthetic and real-world data experiments are conducted to further illustrate the merits of our procedure.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

Tell Me Without Telling Me: Two-Way Prediction of Visualization Literacy and Visual Attention

Accounting for individual differences can improve the effectiveness of visualization design. While the role of visual attention in visualization interpretation is well recognized, existing work often overlooks how this behavior varies based on visual literacy levels. Based on data from a 235-participant user study covering three visualization tests (mini-VLAT, CALVI, and SGL), we show that distinct attention patterns in visual data exploration can correlate with participants' literacy levels: While experts (high-scorers) generally show a strong attentional focus, novices (low-scorers) focus less and explore more. We then propose two computational models leveraging these insights: Lit2Sal -- a novel visual saliency model that predicts observer attention given their visualization literacy level, and Sal2Lit -- a model to predict visual literacy from human visual attention data. Our quantitative and qualitative evaluation demonstrates that Lit2Sal outperforms state-of-the-art saliency models with literacy-aware considerations. Sal2Lit predicts literacy with 86% accuracy using a single attention map, providing a time-efficient supplement to literacy assessment that only takes less than a minute. Taken together, our unique approach to consider individual differences in salience models and visual attention in literacy assessments paves the way for new directions in personalized visual data communication to enhance understanding.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

Exploiting scattering-based point spread functions for snapshot 5D and modality-switchable lensless imaging

Snapshot multi-dimensional imaging offers a promising alternative to traditional low-dimensional imaging techniques by enabling the simultaneous capture of spatial, spectral, polarization, and other information in a single shot for improved imaging speed and acquisition efficiency. However, existing snapshot multi-dimensional imaging systems are often hindered by their large size, complexity, and high cost, which constrain their practical applicability. In this work, we propose a compact lensless diffuser camera for snapshot multi-dimensional imaging (Diffuser-mCam), which can reconstruct five-dimensional (5-D) images from a single-shot 2D recording of speckle-like measurement under incoherent illumination. By employing both the scattering medium and the space-division multiplexing strategy to extract high-dimensional optical features, we show that the multi-dimensional data (2D intensity distribution, spectral, polarization, time) of the desired light field can be encoded into a snapshot speckle-like pattern via a diffuser, and subsequently decoded using a compressed sensing algorithm at the sampling rate of 2.5%, eliminating the need for multi-scanning processes. We further demonstrate that our method can be flexibly switched between 5D and selectively reduced-dimensional imaging, providing an efficient way of reducing computational resource demands. Our work presents a compact, cost-effective, and versatile framework for snapshot multi-dimensional imaging and opens up new opportunities for the design of novel imaging systems for applications in areas such as medical imaging, remote sensing, and autonomous systems.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

Striking the Perfect Balance: Preserving Privacy While Boosting Utility in Collaborative Medical Prediction Platforms

Online collaborative medical prediction platforms offer convenience and real-time feedback by leveraging massive electronic health records. However, growing concerns about privacy and low prediction quality can deter patient participation and doctor cooperation. In this paper, we first clarify the privacy attacks, namely attribute attacks targeting patients and model extraction attacks targeting doctors, and specify the corresponding privacy principles. We then propose a privacy-preserving mechanism and integrate it into a novel one-shot distributed learning framework, aiming to simultaneously meet both privacy requirements and prediction performance objectives. Within the framework of statistical learning theory, we theoretically demonstrate that the proposed distributed learning framework can achieve the optimal prediction performance under specific privacy requirements. We further validate the developed privacy-preserving collaborative medical prediction platform through both toy simulations and real-world data experiments.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

Dynamical Approach to Realize Room-Temperature Superconductivity in LaH$_{10}$

Metallic hydrogen and hydride materials stand as promising avenues to achieve room-temperature superconductivity. Characterized by their high phonon frequencies and moderate coupling strengths, several high-pressure hydrides were theoretically predicted to exhibit transition temperatures ($T_c$) exceeding 250\,K, a claim further substantiated by experimental evidence. In an effort to push $T_c$ beyond room temperature, we introduce a dynamical method that involves stimulating hydrides with mid-infrared lasers. Employing Floquet first-principles simulations, we observe that in a nonequilibrium state induced by light, both the electronic density of states and the coupling to high-energy phonons see notable enhancements. These simultaneous improvements collectively result in an estimated 20\%-30\% rise in $T_c$ in practical pump conditions. Our theoretical investigation, therefore, offers a novel strategy to potentially raise the $T_c$ of hydrides above room temperature.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2025

Socially Aware Robot Crowd Navigation via Online Uncertainty-Driven Risk Adaptation

Navigation in human-robot shared crowded environments remains challenging, as robots are expected to move efficiently while respecting human motion conventions. However, many existing approaches emphasize safety or efficiency while overlooking social awareness. This article proposes Learning-Risk Model Predictive Control (LR-MPC), a data-driven navigation algorithm that balances efficiency, safety, and social awareness. LR-MPC consists of two phases: an offline risk learning phase, where a Probabilistic Ensemble Neural Network (PENN) is trained using risk data from a heuristic MPC-based baseline (HR-MPC), and an online adaptive inference phase, where local waypoints are sampled and globally guided by a Multi-RRT planner. Each candidate waypoint is evaluated for risk by PENN, and predictions are filtered using epistemic and aleatoric uncertainty to ensure robust decision-making. The safest waypoint is selected as the MPC input for real-time navigation. Extensive experiments demonstrate that LR-MPC outperforms baseline methods in success rate and social awareness, enabling robots to navigate complex crowds with high adaptability and low disruption. A website about this work is available at https://sites.google.com/view/lr-mpc.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2025

Towards Universal Offline Black-Box Optimization via Learning Language Model Embeddings

The pursuit of universal black-box optimization (BBO) algorithms is a longstanding goal. However, unlike domains such as language or vision, where scaling structured data has driven generalization, progress in offline BBO remains hindered by the lack of unified representations for heterogeneous numerical spaces. Thus, existing offline BBO approaches are constrained to single-task and fixed-dimensional settings, failing to achieve cross-domain universal optimization. Recent advances in language models (LMs) offer a promising path forward: their embeddings capture latent relationships in a unifying way, enabling universal optimization across different data types possible. In this paper, we discuss multiple potential approaches, including an end-to-end learning framework in the form of next-token prediction, as well as prioritizing the learning of latent spaces with strong representational capabilities. To validate the effectiveness of these methods, we collect offline BBO tasks and data from open-source academic works for training. Experiments demonstrate the universality and effectiveness of our proposed methods. Our findings suggest that unifying language model priors and learning string embedding space can overcome traditional barriers in universal BBO, paving the way for general-purpose BBO algorithms. The code is provided at https://github.com/lamda-bbo/universal-offline-bbo.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

The Future of the Correlated Electron Problem

A central problem in modern condensed matter physics is the understanding of materials with strong electron correlations. Despite extensive work, the essential physics of many of these systems is not understood and there is very little ability to make predictions in this class of materials. In this manuscript we share our personal views on the major open problems in the field of correlated electron systems. We discuss some possible routes to make progress in this rich and fascinating field. This manuscript is the result of the vigorous discussions and deliberations that took place at Johns Hopkins University during a three-day workshop January 27, 28, and 29, 2020 that brought together six senior scientists and 46 more junior scientists. Our hope, is that the topics we have presented will provide inspiration for others working in this field and motivation for the idea that significant progress can be made on very hard problems if we focus our collective energies.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2025

Symmetry-protected electronic metastability in an optically driven cuprate ladder

Optically excited quantum materials exhibit nonequilibrium states with remarkable emergent properties, but these phenomena are usually transient, decaying on picosecond timescales and limiting practical applications. Advancing the design and control of nonequilibrium phases requires the development of targeted strategies to achieve long-lived, metastable phases. Here, we report the discovery of symmetry-protected electronic metastability in the model cuprate ladder Sr$_{14}$Cu$_{24}$O$_{41}$. Using femtosecond resonant x-ray scattering and spectroscopy, we show that this metastability is driven by a transfer of holes from chain-like charge reservoirs into the ladders. This ultrafast charge redistribution arises from the optical dressing and activation of a hopping pathway that is forbidden by symmetry at equilibrium. Relaxation back to the ground state is hence suppressed after the pump coherence dissipates. Our findings highlight how dressing materials with electromagnetic fields can dynamically activate terms in the electronic Hamiltonian, and provide a rational design strategy for nonequilibrium phases of matter.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2025

Efficient Over-parameterized Matrix Sensing from Noisy Measurements via Alternating Preconditioned Gradient Descent

We consider the noisy matrix sensing problem in the over-parameterization setting, where the estimated rank $r$ is larger than the true rank $r_\star$ of the target matrix $X_\star$. Specifically, our main objective is to recover a matrix $ X_\star \in \mathbb{R}^{n_1 \times n_2} $ with rank $ r_\star $ from noisy measurements using an over-parameterized factorization $ LR^\top $, where $ L \in \mathbb{R}^{n_1 \times r}, \, R \in \mathbb{R}^{n_2 \times r} $ and $ \min\{n_1, n_2\} \ge r > r_\star $, with $ r_\star $ being unknown. Recently, preconditioning methods have been proposed to accelerate the convergence of matrix sensing problem compared to vanilla gradient descent, incorporating preconditioning terms $ (L^\top L + λI)^{-1} $ and $ (R^\top R + λI)^{-1} $ into the original gradient. However, these methods require careful tuning of the damping parameter $λ$ and are sensitive to step size. To address these limitations, we propose the alternating preconditioned gradient descent (APGD) algorithm, which alternately updates the two factor matrices, eliminating the need for the damping parameter $λ$ and enabling faster convergence with larger step sizes. We theoretically prove that APGD convergences to a near-optimal error at a linear rate. We further show that APGD can be extended to deal with other low-rank matrix estimation tasks, also with a theoretical guarantee of linear convergence. To validate the effectiveness and scalability of the proposed APGD, we conduct simulated and real-world experiments on a wide range of low-rank estimation problems, including noisy matrix sensing, weighted PCA, 1-bit matrix completion, and matrix completion. The extensive results demonstrate that APGD consistently achieves the fastest convergence and the lowest computation time compared to the existing alternatives.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

GDNTT: an Area-Efficient Parallel NTT Accelerator Using Glitch-Driven Near-Memory Computing and Reconfigurable 10T SRAM

With the rapid advancement of quantum computing technology, post-quantum cryptography (PQC) has emerged as a pivotal direction for next-generation encryption standards. Among these, lattice-based cryptographic schemes rely heavily on the fast Number Theoretic Transform (NTT) over polynomial rings, whose performance directly determines encryption/decryption throughput and energy efficiency. However, existing software-based NTT implementations struggle to meet the real-time performance and low-power requirements of IoT and edge devices. To address this challenge, this paper proposes an area-efficient highly parallel NTT accelerator with glitch-driven near-memory computing (GDNTT). The design integrates a 10T SRAM for data storage, enabling flexible row/column data access and streamlining circuit mapping strategies. Furthermore, a glitch generator is incorporated into the near-memory computing unit, significantly reducing the latency of butterfly operations. Evaluation results show that the proposed NTT accelerator achieves a 1.5~28* improvement in throughput-per-area compared to the state-of-the-art.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2025

Correlated vibration-solvent and Duschinsky effects on electron transfer dynamics and optical spectroscopy

Understanding the effects of vibrations in electron transfer (ET) dynamics and optical spectroscopies is essential to precisely interpret the role of decoherence, especially for systems embedded in solvents. In this work, we study the correlated Duschinsky and solvent effects on ET and spectroscopy. Exploited is a novel extended dissipaton-equation-of motion (ext-DEOM) approach, which is an exact and non-Markovian, non-perturbative method for quadratic system-bath couplings. The unified bath description, in terms of multiple Brownian oscillators (BOs), comprises the solvent modes and also intramolecular vibrations. Both ET dynamics and spectroscopy show the complex interplay among linear displacements, frequency shifts, Duschinsky rotations and solvent-induced BO-mode correlations. The reduced ET system density operator evolution is further analyzed in the context of Bloch sphere representation that is basis-set independent due to its geometric nature.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2025

Offline Model-Based Optimization by Learning to Rank

Offline model-based optimization (MBO) aims to identify a design that maximizes a black-box function using only a fixed, pre-collected dataset of designs and their corresponding scores. A common approach in offline MBO is to train a regression-based surrogate model by minimizing mean squared error (MSE) and then find the best design within this surrogate model by different optimizers (e.g., gradient ascent). However, a critical challenge is the risk of out-of-distribution errors, i.e., the surrogate model may typically overestimate the scores and mislead the optimizers into suboptimal regions. Prior works have attempted to address this issue in various ways, such as using regularization techniques and ensemble learning to enhance the robustness of the model, but it still remains. In this paper, we argue that regression models trained with MSE are not well-aligned with the primary goal of offline MBO, which is to select promising designs rather than to predict their scores precisely. Notably, if a surrogate model can maintain the order of candidate designs based on their relative score relationships, it can produce the best designs even without precise predictions. To validate it, we conduct experiments to compare the relationship between the quality of the final designs and MSE, finding that the correlation is really very weak. In contrast, a metric that measures order-maintaining quality shows a significantly stronger correlation. Based on this observation, we propose learning a ranking-based model that leverages learning to rank techniques to prioritize promising designs based on their relative scores. We show that the generalization error on ranking loss can be well bounded. Empirical results across diverse tasks demonstrate the superior performance of our proposed ranking-based models than twenty existing methods.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

Nonperturbative Open Quantum Dynamics Bypass Influence Functional

An ordered moment approach to exact open quantum dynamics is presented, which bypasses the Feynman-Vernon influence functional formalism. The hierarchical equations of motion are constructed using Wick's contraction, which follows specific orderings of the bath's creation and annihilation operators. Our approach moves beyond the traditional influence functional formalism, offering a more intuitive and direct framework, and extends the applicability of theory to nonlinear system--bath coupling scenarios.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Grid Labeling: Crowdsourcing Task-Specific Importance from Visualizations

Knowing where people look in visualizations is key to effective design. Yet, existing research primarily focuses on free-viewing-based saliency models - although visual attention is inherently task-dependent. Collecting task-relevant importance data remains a resource-intensive challenge. To address this, we introduce Grid Labeling - a novel annotation method for collecting task-specific importance data to enhance saliency prediction models. Grid Labeling dynamically segments visualizations into Adaptive Grids, enabling efficient, low-effort annotation while adapting to visualization structure. We conducted a human subject study comparing Grid Labeling with existing annotation methods, ImportAnnots, and BubbleView across multiple metrics. Results show that Grid Labeling produces the least noisy data and the highest inter-participant agreement with fewer participants while requiring less physical (e.g., clicks/mouse movements) and cognitive effort. An interactive demo is available at https://jangsus1.github.io/Grid-Labeling.

cs.HC↗