arXiv subjects

Ying Xia

Publications and source records attributed to Ying Xia.

17 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Chiral doublon bound states in a synthetic topological waveguide

Nonlinear waveguide QED serves as a platform for studying correlated photon dynamics, where its interplay with topological bound states can give rise to unconventional phenomena. We investigate a triangular ladder waveguide in which a pair of emitters forms a doublon bound state through strong nearest-neighbor interactions. By mapping the doublon dynamics onto an effective SSH chain, we show that the system is equivalent to an effective emitter coupled to a topological doublon bath. Using the vacancy-like dressed state approach, we demonstrate the existence of a chiral bound state with a node at the coupling site and an exponentially localized wave function inherited from the SSH edge states. Extending this picture to two emitter pairs, we derive an effective four-body interaction whose strength is determined by the relative chirality and the separation parity of the bound states. When the two bound states face each other, coherent Rabi oscillations emerge; when they are arranged back-to-back or have an even separation, the interaction vanishes. Our results provide a route toward engineering tunable many-body interactions between correlated photon pairs and realizing nonlinear quantum networks based on flying doublons.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Multiparameter quantum estimation in a photon system induced by gravitational redshift

As photons propagate through curved spacetime, gravitational effects become unavoidable. In particular, gravitational redshift can induce significant distortion in photon wave packets, making it es?sential to investigate parameter estimation within this context. While previous research has focused on single-parameter estimation using the quantum Cramer-Rao bound, the multiparameter scenario remains largely unexplored. In this work, we investigate multiparameter quantum estimation for a photon system subject to gravitational redshift under both amplitude-damping and Ohmic-like dephasing channels. Our analysis reveals that the quantum Cramer-Rao bound fails to provide a tight error bound for the two-parameter estimation involving the initial phase and weight parameters inboth types of noisy channels. To overcome this limitation, we numerically compute two tighter error bounds, i.e., the Holevo Cramer-Rao bound and the Nagaoka bound, when utilizing a semidefinite program. We demonstrate that the Nagaoka bound yields the tightest error bound among all considered bounds, consistent with the general hierarchy of multiparameter quantum estimation. Furthermore, for the three-parameter estimation, including the initial weight parameter, the phase parameter, and the strength of gravitational redshift, we observe significantly enhanced estimation precision in the strong-coupling regime compared to the weak-coupling regime under the amplitude-damping channel. Similarly, in the Ohmic-like dephasing channel, the sub-Ohmic regime consistently affords higher precision than the Ohmic and super-Ohmic regimes.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Ostwald's Rule of Stages in One-Dimension

Ostwald's Rule of Stages, which is one of the most widely observed phenomena associated with crystallization of polymorphs, follows naturally from the thermodynamics of nucleation. However, most observations of its manifestations have been limited to three-dimensional crystals and its validity in one-dimension, where no nucleation barrier exists, remains unclear. Here we investigate the two-dimensional assemblies and phase transformation mechanisms of a peptide that forms two distinct phases on graphite via one-dimensional nucleation using in situ atomic force microscopy. We find that the evolution of phases illustrates Ostwald's Rule, but does so for purely kinetic reasons, and that the stable phase replaces the metastable via a dissolution-reprecipitation mechanism enabled by inherent fluctuations of the phase boundary. The findings provide general insights into the growth and transformation mechanisms of coexisting two-dimensional phases and thus delineate a strategy for capturing transient two-dimensional structures.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2026

Squeezing-Enhanced Two-Phase Estimation with N-Particle W-type States

We investigate the simultaneous estimation of two optical phases in a three-mode interferometer assisted by optical parametric amplification (OPA). By employing the normally ordered characteristic-function formalism, we analytically obtain all photon-number moments of the output quantum state, enabling an explicit evaluation of the quantum Fisher information matrix for multiparameter phase estimation. In the lossless scenario, we show that uniformly applied OPA significantly enhances the attainable precision beyond that of an unamplified interferometer. By analyzing the second-order correlation functions, we demonstrate that this enhancement originates from the amplification of intra-mode photon-number correlations, rather than from inter-mode correlations. We further extend our analysis to realistic interferometers with photon loss using a purification-based variational approach. Although loss degrades the achievable precision, the OPA-assisted scheme retains a clear advantage for moderate loss, indicating a degree of robustness against dissipation. Our results clarify the physical mechanism underlying OPA-enhanced multiparameter quantum metrology and provide guidelines for optimizing phase estimation protocols in realistic noisy environments.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Standardized Evaluation of Automatic Methods for Perivascular Spaces Segmentation in MRI -- MICCAI 2024 Challenge Results

Perivascular spaces (PVS), when abnormally enlarged and visible in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) structural sequences, are important imaging markers of cerebral small vessel disease and potential indicators of neurodegenerative conditions. Despite their clinical significance, automatic enlarged PVS (EPVS) segmentation remains challenging due to their small size, variable morphology, similarity with other pathological features, and limited annotated datasets. This paper presents the EPVS Challenge organized at MICCAI 2024, which aims to advance the development of automated algorithms for EPVS segmentation across multi-site data. We provided a diverse dataset comprising 100 training, 50 validation, and 50 testing scans collected from multiple international sites (UK, Singapore, and China) with varying MRI protocols and demographics. All annotations followed the STRIVE protocol to ensure standardized ground truth and covered the full brain parenchyma. Seven teams completed the full challenge, implementing various deep learning approaches primarily based on U-Net architectures with innovations in multi-modal processing, ensemble strategies, and transformer-based components. Performance was evaluated using dice similarity coefficient, absolute volume difference, recall, and precision metrics. The winning method employed MedNeXt architecture with a dual 2D/3D strategy for handling varying slice thicknesses. The top solutions showed relatively good performance on test data from seen datasets, but significant degradation of performance was observed on the previously unseen Shanghai cohort, highlighting cross-site generalization challenges due to domain shift. This challenge establishes an important benchmark for EPVS segmentation methods and underscores the need for the continued development of robust algorithms that can generalize in diverse clinical settings.

q-bio.QM↗

arXiv2025

Experimental demonstration of genuine quantum information transmission through completely depolarizing channels in a superposition of cyclic orders

A major challenge in quantum communication is addressing the negative effects of noise on channel capacity, especially for completely depolarizing channels, where information transmission is inherently impossible. The concept of indefinite causal order provides a promising solution by allowing control over the sequence in which channels are applied. We experimentally demonstrate the activation of quantum communication through completely depolarizing channels using a programmable silicon photonic quantum chip. By implementing configurations based on the superposition of cyclic orders, a form of indefinite causal order, we report the first experimental realization of genuine quantum information transmission across multiple concatenated completely depolarizing channels. Our results show that when four completely depolarizing channels are combined using the superposition of cyclic orders, the fidelity of the output state is $0.712 \pm 0.013$, significantly exceeding the classical threshold of 2/3. Our work establishes indefinite causal order as a powerful tool for overcoming noise-induced limitations in quantum communication, demonstrating its potential in high-noise environments and opening new possibilities for building robust quantum networks.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

MedNet-PVS: A MedNeXt-Based Deep Learning Model for Automated Segmentation of Perivascular Spaces

Enlarged perivascular spaces (PVS) are increasingly recognized as biomarkers of cerebral small vessel disease, Alzheimer's disease, stroke, and aging-related neurodegeneration. However, manual segmentation of PVS is time-consuming and subject to moderate inter-rater reliability, while existing automated deep learning models have moderate performance and typically fail to generalize across diverse clinical and research MRI datasets. We adapted MedNeXt-L-k5, a Transformer-inspired 3D encoder-decoder convolutional network, for automated PVS segmentation. Two models were trained: one using a homogeneous dataset of 200 T2-weighted (T2w) MRI scans from the Human Connectome Project-Aging (HCP-Aging) dataset and another using 40 heterogeneous T1-weighted (T1w) MRI volumes from seven studies across six scanners. Model performance was evaluated using internal 5-fold cross validation (5FCV) and leave-one-site-out cross validation (LOSOCV). MedNeXt-L-k5 models trained on the T2w images of the HCP-Aging dataset achieved voxel-level Dice scores of 0.88+/-0.06 (white matter, WM), comparable to the reported inter-rater reliability of that dataset, and the highest yet reported in the literature. The same models trained on the T1w images of the HCP-Aging dataset achieved a substantially lower Dice score of 0.58+/-0.09 (WM). Under LOSOCV, the model had voxel-level Dice scores of 0.38+/-0.16 (WM) and 0.35+/-0.12 (BG), and cluster-level Dice scores of 0.61+/-0.19 (WM) and 0.62+/-0.21 (BG). MedNeXt-L-k5 provides an efficient solution for automated PVS segmentation across diverse T1w and T2w MRI datasets. MedNeXt-L-k5 did not outperform the nnU-Net, indicating that the attention-based mechanisms present in transformer-inspired models to provide global context are not required for high accuracy in PVS segmentation.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2025

$d+1$ Measurement Bases are Sufficient for Determining $d$-Dimensional Quantum States: Theory and Experiment

A long-standing problem in quantum physics is to determine the minimal number of measurement bases required for the complete characterization of unknown quantum states, a question of particular relevance to high-dimensional quantum information processing. Here, we propose a quantum state tomography scheme that requires only $d+1$ projective measurement bases to fully reconstruct an arbitrary $d$-dimensional quantum state. As a proof-of-principle, we experimentally verified this scheme on a silicon photonic chip by reconstructing quantum states for $d=6$, in which a complete set of mutually unbiased bases does not exist. This approach offers new perspectives for quantum state characterization and measurement design, and holds promise for future applications in quantum information processing.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Compact Accelerator-Based Production of Carrier-free $^{177}$Lu From 18 MeV $D^+$ on [$^{176}$Yb]Yb$_2$O$_3$

We use experimental and simulated excitation functions to estimate the yield of deuteron activations on a [$^{176}$Yb]Yb$_2$O$_3$ target enriched to 99%. Subsequent calculations are used to determine the production of radiotherapeutic $^{177}$Lu according to a 10 mA, 18 MeV $D^+$ compact linear accelerator. The design comprises a single radio-frequency quadrupole accelerator (RFQ) and seven drift tube linacs (DTLs) that achieve a beam efficiency of 99.5% over a length of $12\,\text{m}$. Our results show that a 5-day irradiation can yield more than $1$ mg of $^{177}$Lu, exceeding $4.4$ TBq. After a 2 day processing period, it is estimated that the sample will have a radiopurity greater than 99.8% (carrier-free). Given recent EMA and FDA approvals of $^{177}$Lu-DOTATATE and $^{177}$Lu-PSMA-617, our results confirm the viability of accelerator-based $^{177}$Lu production and provide a promising clinical alternative to reactor-based methods.

physics.acc-ph↗

arXiv2025

Achieving electrode smoothing by controlling the nucleation phase of metal deposition through polymer-substrate binding

Polymer additives [like polyethylene oxide (PEO)] are widely used for smooth electrode deposition in aqueous zinc and a number of other battery systems currently investigated for energy storage applications. However, the precise mechanism by which they regulate morphology and suppress dendrite formation remains unclear. In this study, we address this knowledge gap by using in-situ electrochemical atomic force microscopy (EC-AFM) to directly observe the interfacial evolution during Zn electrodeposition and polymer adsorption on copper (Cu) substrates in the presence of varying concentrations of ZnSO4 and PEO. Contrary to previous literature assumptions which emphasize the binding to the growing Zn crystal surfaces or Zn2+ ions, our results demonstrate that PEO smooths Zn films by promoting nucleation of (002)-oriented Zn platelets through interactions with the Cu substrate. Density functional theory (DFT) simulations support this finding by showing that PEO adsorption on Cu modifies the interfacial energy of Zn/Cu/electrolyte interfaces, favoring the stabilization of Zn (002) on the Cu substrate, as well as confines Zn electrodeposition to a narrow near-surface region. These findings elucidate a novel design principle for electrode smoothing, emphasizing the importance of substrate selection paired with polymer additives that exhibit an attractive interaction with the substrate, but minimal interaction with growing crystals, offering a mechanistic perspective for improved battery performance.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2025

Selective band interaction and long-range hopping in a structured environment with giant atoms

Giant atoms, which couple to the environment at multiple discrete points, exhibit various nontrivial phenomena in quantum optics due to their nonlocal couplings. In this study, we propose a one-dimensional cross-stitch ladder lattice featuring both a dispersive band and a flat band. By modulating the relative phase between the coupling points, the giant atom selectively interacts with either band. First, we analyze the scenario where the dispersive and flat bands intersect at two points, and the atomic frequency lies within the band. Unlike the small atom, which simultaneously interacts with both bands, a single giant atom with a controllable phase interacts exclusively with the dispersive or flat band. Second, in the bandgap regime, where two atoms interact through bound-state overlaps manifesting as dipole-dipole interactions, we demonstrate that giant atoms enable deterministic long-range hopping and energy exchange with higher fidelity compared to small atoms. These findings provide promising applications in quantum information processing, offering enhanced controllability and selectivity for quantum systems and devices.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Molecular-Resolution Imaging of Ice Crystallized from Liquid Water

Despite the ubiquity of ice, a molecular-resolution image of ice crystallized from liquid water or the resulting defect structure has never been obtained. Here, we report the stabilization and angstrom-resolution electron imaging of ice Ih crystallized from liquid water by developing cryogenic liquid-cell transmission electron microscopy (CRYOLIC-TEM). We combine lattice mapping with molecular dynamics simulations to reveal that ice formation is highly tolerant to nanoscale defects such as misoriented subdomains and trapped gas bubbles, which are stabilized by molecular-scale structural motifs. Importantly, bubble surfaces adopt low-energy nanofacets and create negligible strain fields in the surrounding crystal. These bubbles can dynamically nucleate, grow, migrate, dissolve, and coalesce under electron irradiation and be monitored in situ near a steady state. This work opens the door to understanding water crystallization behaviors at an unprecedented spatial resolution.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2024

Noiseless linear amplification-based quantum Ziv-Zakai bound for phase estimation and its Heisenberg error limits in noisy scenarios

In this work, we address the central problem about how to effectively find the available precision limit of unknown parameters. In the framework of the quantum Ziv-Zakai bound (QZZB), we employ noiseless linear amplification (NLA)techniques to an initial coherent state (CS) as the probe state, and focus on whether the phase estimation performance is improved significantly in noisy scenarios, involving the photon-loss and phase-diffusion cases. More importantly, we also obtain two kinds of Heisenberg error limits of the QZZB with the NLA-based CS in these noisy scenarios, making comparisons with both the Margolus-Levitin (ML) type bound and the Mandelstam-Tamm (MT) type bound. Our analytical results show that in cases of photon loss and phase diffusion, the phase estimation performance of the QZZB can be improved remarkably by increasing the NLA gain factor. Particularly, the improvement is more pronounced with severe photon losses. Furthermore in minimal photon losses, our Heisenberg error limit shows better compactness than the cases of the ML-type and MT-type bounds. Our findings will provide an useful guidance for accomplishing more complex quantum information processing tasks.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Proposal and design of 81.25 MHz heavy ion drift tube linacs for BISOL

Based on the design requirements proposed by the Beijing On-Line Isotope Separation project (BISOL), four Sn$^{22+}$-based,81.25MHz continuous wave (CW) drift tube linac (DTL) cavities have been designed. These DTLs are capable of accelerating Sn$^{22+}$ of 0.1 pmA from 0.5 MeV/u to 1.8 MeV/u over a length of 7 m, with an output longitudinal normalized RMS emittance of 0.35$π\cdot$ mm$\cdot$mrad, and transmission efficiency higher than 95%. The dynamics design adopted the KONUS (Kombinierte Null Grad Struktur Combined $0^\circ$ Structure) scheme. Comprehensive error study implies that these DTLs can accommodate a wide range of non-ideal beams and cavity alignment errors while maintaining high transmission efficiency. The electromagnetic design employed a Cross-bar H-mode (CH) structure for superior water-cooling characteristics, and a detailed tuning analysis was conducted to derive an optimal tuning scheme. The results of the multiple-physics analysis indicate that the frequency shift of each cavity is within an acceptable range. Comparing the dynamics requirements with the RF design results, similar particle output phase distribution, equivalent energy gain and consistent emittance growth are observed. Detailed designs will be presented in this manuscript.

physics.acc-ph↗

arXiv2023

Quantum super-resolution for imaging two pointlike entangled photon sources

We investigate the resolution for imaging two pointlike entangled sources by using the method of the moments and the spatial-mode demultiplexing (SPADE), where the pointlike entangled sources can be generated by injecting single-mode sources with arbitrary quantum statistics distribution into an optical parametric amplifier (OPA). We demonstrate that the separation estimation sensitivity is mainly determined by the photon distribution in each detected modes and it can be enhanced by either increasing the squeezed parameter of the OPA or eliminating the relative phase difference of the entangle sources. Furthermore, in the limiting case of infinitely small source separation, the usage of entangled sources can have better resolution than those using incoherent and coherent sources. The results here can find important applications for the quantum super-resolution imaging and quantum metrology.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Quantum multiparameter estimation with multi-mode photon catalysis entangled squeezed state

We propose a method to generate the multi-mode entangled catalysis squeezed vacuum states (MECSVS) by embedding the cross-Kerr nonlinear medium into the Mach-Zehnder interferometer. This method realizes the exchange of quantum states between different modes based on Fredkin gate. In addition, we study the MECSVS as the probe state of multi-arm optical interferometer to realize multi-phase simultaneous estimation. The results show that the quantum Cramer-Rao bound (QCRB) of phase estimation can be improved by increasing the number of catalytic photons or decreasing the transmissivity of the optical beam splitter using for photon catalysis. In addition, we also show that even if there is photon loss, the QCRB of our photon catalysis scheme is lower than that of the ideal entangled squeezed vacuum states (ESVS), which shows that by performing the photon catalytic operation is more robust against photon loss than that without the catalytic operation. The results here can find important applications in quantum metrology for multiparatmeter estimation.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Automated volumetric and statistical shape assessment of cam-type morphology of the femoral head-neck region from 3D magnetic resonance images

Femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) cam morphology is routinely assessed using two-dimensional alpha angles which do not provide specific data on cam size characteristics. The purpose of this study is to implement a novel, automated three-dimensional (3D) pipeline, CamMorph, for segmentation and measurement of cam volume, surface area and height from magnetic resonance (MR) images in patients with FAI. The CamMorph pipeline involves two processes: i) proximal femur segmentation using an approach integrating 3D U-net with focused shape modelling (FSM); ii) use of patient-specific anatomical information from 3D FSM to simulate healthy femoral bone models and pathological region constraints to identify cam bone mass. Agreement between manual and automated segmentation of the proximal femur was evaluated with the Dice similarity index (DSI) and surface distance measures. Independent t-tests or Mann-Whitney U rank tests were used to compare the femoral head volume, cam volume, surface area and height data between female and male patients with FAI. There was a mean DSI value of 0.964 between manual and automated segmentation of proximal femur volume. Compared to female FAI patients, male patients had a significantly larger mean femoral head volume (66.12cm3 v 46.02cm3, p<0.001). Compared to female FAI patients, male patients had a significantly larger mean cam volume (1136.87mm3 v 337.86mm3, p<0.001), surface area (657.36mm2 v 306.93mm2 , p<0.001), maximum-height (3.89mm v 2.23mm, p<0.001) and average-height (1.94mm v 1.00mm, p<0.001). Automated analyses of 3D MR images from patients with FAI using the CamMorph pipeline showed that, in comparison with female patients, male patients had significantly greater cam volume, surface area and height.

eess.IV↗