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Yikai Chen

Publications and source records attributed to Yikai Chen.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

Modulation of charge density waves in a twisted vortex moire superlattice

Twisted moire superlattices in van-der-Waals heterostructures provide a powerful platform for engineering correlated states through moire-band reconstruction. However, whether globally coherent electronic orders can be continuously manipulated at the nanoscale remains largely unexplored. Reconstructed moire structures in small-angle and near-commensurate regime feature continuously varying local environments, offering new opportunities for nanoscale manipulation of correlated phases. Here, we report the modulation of charge density wave (CDW) states in a twisted vortex moire superlattice formed between monolayer VTe2 and superconducting NbSe2. Scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy reveals that the intrinsic long-range CDW of monolayer VTe2 is reconstructed into inequivalent local phases with distinct stability and coherence within a single moire unit cell, including suppressed CDW order and enhanced short-range CDW correlations persisting to room temperature. First-principles calculations show that the reconstructed CDW landscape originates from strong local strain variation, where compressive strain substantially stabilizes the charge order. Furthermore, the modulated CDW states exhibit competing interplay with proximity-induced superconductivity. Our results establish vortex moire superlattices as a versatile platform for nanoscale manipulation of correlated electronic orders in low-dimensional quantum materials.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

When Tabular Foundation Models Meet Strategic Tabular Data: A Prior Alignment Approach

Tabular foundation models based on pretrained prior-data fitted networks~(PFNs) have shown strong generalization on diverse tabular tasks, but they are typically designed for \emph{non-strategic} settings where data distributions are independent of deployed classifiers. In many real-world decision scenarios, however, individuals may strategically modify their features after deployment to obtain favorable outcomes, inducing a post-deployment distribution shift. This paper studies whether PFN-style tabular foundation models can generalize to such \emph{strategic} tabular data. We show that strategic manipulation creates a mismatch between the non-strategic prior learned during pretraining and the post-manipulation strategic prior, which leads to systematic prediction bias. To address this issue, we propose \textbf{Strategic Prior-data Fitted Network}~\textit{(SPN)}, an inference-time strategy-aware framework that adapts tabular foundation models to strategic environments without retraining. SPN constructs strategic in-context examples to approximate post-manipulation inputs and aligns PFN predictions with the induced strategic distribution. Experiments on real-world and synthetic tabular datasets show that SPN consistently improves robustness and predictive performance under strategic manipulation compared with both tabular foundation models and classical tabular methods.

cs.AI

Beyond Rational Illusion: Behaviorally Realistic Strategic Classification

Strategic classification(SC) studies the interaction between decision models and agents who strategically manipulate their features for favorable outcomes. Existing SC frameworks typically rely on the idealized assumption that agents are strictly rational. However, evidence from behavioral economics and psychology consistently shows that real-world decision-making is often shaped by cognitive biases, deviating from pure rationality. To formalize this limitation, we identify and define a new problem setting, termed the behaviorally realistic strategic classification problem, where agents' strategic manipulations deviate from full rationality due to psychological biases. Motivated by the identified limitation, we propose the Prospect-Guided Strategic Framework (Pro-SF) to address the problem, a principled framework grounded in prospect theory to model and learn under behaviorally realistic strategic responses. Specifically, to capture behaviorally realistic strategic manipulations, our framework reformulates the Stackelberg-style interaction between agents and the decision-maker by incorporating three key mechanisms inspired by prospect theory, including the asymmetry between benefits and costs, different subjective reference points, and non-rational probability distortion. Experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets establish Pro-SF as a behaviorally grounded approach to strategic classification, bridging machine learning and behavioral economics for more reliable deployment in the real world.

cs.AI

Detecting Unobserved Confounders: A Kernelized Regression Approach

Detecting unobserved confounders is crucial for reliable causal inference in observational studies. Existing methods require either linearity assumptions or multiple heterogeneous environments, limiting applicability to nonlinear single-environment settings. To bridge this gap, we propose Kernel Regression Confounder Detection (KRCD), a novel method for detecting unobserved confounding in nonlinear observational data under single-environment conditions. KRCD leverages reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces to model complex dependencies. By comparing standard and higherorder kernel regressions, we derive a test statistic whose significant deviation from zero indicates unobserved confounding. Theoretically, we prove two key results: First, in infinite samples, regression coefficients coincide if and only if no unobserved confounders exist. Second, finite-sample differences converge to zero-mean Gaussian distributions with tractable variance. Extensive experiments on synthetic benchmarks and the Twins dataset demonstrate that KRCD not only outperforms existing baselines but also achieves superior computational efficiency.

stat.ML

PerchMobi^3: A Multi-Modal Robot with Power-Reuse Quad-Fan Mechanism for Air-Ground-Wall Locomotion

Achieving seamless integration of aerial flight, ground driving, and wall climbing within a single robotic platform remains a major challenge, as existing designs often rely on additional adhesion actuators that increase complexity, reduce efficiency, and compromise reliability. To address these limitations, we present PerchMobi^3, a quad-fan, negative-pressure, air-ground-wall robot that implements a propulsion-adhesion power-reuse mechanism. By repurposing four ducted fans to simultaneously provide aerial thrust and negative-pressure adhesion, and integrating them with four actively driven wheels, PerchMobi^3 eliminates dedicated pumps while maintaining a lightweight and compact design. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first quad-fan prototype to demonstrate functional power reuse for multi-modal locomotion. A modeling and control framework enables coordinated operation across ground, wall, and aerial domains with fan-assisted transitions. The feasibility of the design is validated through a comprehensive set of experiments covering ground driving, payload-assisted wall climbing, aerial flight, and cross-mode transitions, demonstrating robust adaptability across locomotion scenarios. These results highlight the potential of PerchMobi^3 as a novel design paradigm for multi-modal robotic mobility, paving the way for future extensions toward autonomous and application-oriented deployment.

cs.RO

Tailless Flapping-Wing Robot With Bio-Inspired Elastic Passive Legs for Multi-Modal Locomotion

Flapping-wing robots offer significant versatility; however, achieving efficient multi-modal locomotion remains challenging. This paper presents the design, modeling, and experimentation of a novel tailless flapping-wing robot with three independently actuated pairs of wings. Inspired by the leg morphology of juvenile water striders, the robot incorporates bio-inspired elastic passive legs that convert flapping-induced vibrations into directional ground movement, enabling locomotion without additional actuators. This vibration-driven mechanism facilitates lightweight, mechanically simplified multi-modal mobility. An SE(3)-based controller coordinates flight and mode transitions with minimal actuation. To validate the robot's feasibility, a functional prototype was developed, and experiments were conducted to evaluate its flight, ground locomotion, and mode-switching capabilities. Results show satisfactory performance under constrained actuation, highlighting the potential of multi-modal flapping-wing designs for future aerial-ground robotic applications. These findings provide a foundation for future studies on frequency-based terrestrial control and passive yaw stabilization in hybrid locomotion systems.

cs.RO

Entanglement distribution over metropolitan fiber using an on-chip broadband polarization entangled photon source

Entangled photon pairs are of crucial importance in quantum networks. For the future demands of large-scale and secure quantum communication, integrated photon sources are highly effective solutions. Here, we report entanglement distribution over a 30 km metropolitan area using on-chip broadband silicon nanowire biphoton polarization entangled source based on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform. This source generates a continuous spectrum spanning the entire C-band (4.5 THz), achieving a locally detected coincidence counts of about 154 kHz within 100 GHz bandwidth, making it suitable for long-distance entanglement distribution among multiple users. By combining this source with quantum entanglement, enhanced by high-precision clock synchronization that achieves a standard deviation of 56.8 ps over 600 s, we observe a violation of the CHSH inequality by 27.8 standard deviations. Our results showcase the potential of silicon photonic technology as a scalable and practical platform for quantum technologies.

quant-ph

APT-MMF: An advanced persistent threat actor attribution method based on multimodal and multilevel feature fusion

Threat actor attribution is a crucial defense strategy for combating advanced persistent threats (APTs). Cyber threat intelligence (CTI), which involves analyzing multisource heterogeneous data from APTs, plays an important role in APT actor attribution. The current attribution methods extract features from different CTI perspectives and employ machine learning models to classify CTI reports according to their threat actors. However, these methods usually extract only one kind of feature and ignore heterogeneous information, especially the attributes and relations of indicators of compromise (IOCs), which form the core of CTI. To address these problems, we propose an APT actor attribution method based on multimodal and multilevel feature fusion (APT-MMF). First, we leverage a heterogeneous attributed graph to characterize APT reports and their IOC information. Then, we extract and fuse multimodal features, including attribute type features, natural language text features and topological relationship features, to construct comprehensive node representations. Furthermore, we design multilevel heterogeneous graph attention networks to learn the deep hidden features of APT report nodes; these networks integrate IOC type-level, metapath-based neighbor node-level, and metapath semantic-level attention. Utilizing multisource threat intelligence, we construct a heterogeneous attributed graph dataset for verification purposes. The experimental results show that our method not only outperforms the existing methods but also demonstrates its good interpretability for attribution analysis tasks.

cs.CR

Persistent oscillations versus thermalization in the quench dynamics of quantum gases with long-range interactions

Searching for nonthermalized dynamics in interacting quantum systems is not only of fundamental theoretical interest in nonequilibrium quantum physics, but also of immense practical significance in quantum information processing. In this paper, we study quantum quench dynamics in an hard-core bosonic model with infinite-range interactions, which have been realized in recent high-finesse cavity experiments. We show the long-time dynamics of this model can exhibit either undamped oscillations or thermalization depending on the choice of initial states. The long-range nature of the interactions rather than conserved quantities are responsible for such nonergodic dynamical behaviors.

cond-mat.quant-gas

Plasmonic dark field microscopy with a polymer substrate

In this letter, a plasmonic dark field microscopy taking advantages of the polymer loaded surface plasmon polariton waveguide (PLSPPW) is experimentally demonstrated. The dye molecules (Rhodamine 6G, Rh6G) are doped in the PLSPPW to launch the plasmonic waves or guided waves. Due to the localized property of these waves, the near-field optical energy on the surface of PLSPPW can be scattered into the far-field only in the presence of the objects. The scattering signals then form the dark-field image of the objects. The proposed technique just utilizes a chip-scale integrated plasmonic multilayered structure which is highly compatible with the conventional optical microscopy. The polymer film involved in the PLSPPW also brings about the merits of small roughness, good stability and bio-compatibility

physics.optics