arXiv subjects

Zhou Zhou

Publications and source records attributed to Zhou Zhou.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2025

Three-Class Emotion Classification for Audiovisual Scenes Based on Ensemble Learning Scheme

Emotion recognition plays a pivotal role in enhancing human-computer interaction, particularly in movie recommendation systems where understanding emotional content is essential. While multimodal approaches combining audio and video have demonstrated effectiveness, their reliance on high-performance graphical computing limits deployment on resource-constrained devices such as personal computers or home audiovisual systems. To address this limitation, this study proposes a novel audio-only ensemble learning framework capable of classifying movie scenes into three emotional categories: Good, Neutral, and Bad. The model integrates ten support vector machines and six neural networks within a stacking ensemble architecture to enhance classification performance. A tailored data preprocessing pipeline, including feature extraction, outlier handling, and feature engineering, is designed to optimize emotional information from audio inputs. Experiments on a simulated dataset achieve 67% accuracy, while a real-world dataset collected from 15 diverse films yields an impressive 86% accuracy. These results underscore the potential of audio-based, lightweight emotion recognition methods for broader consumer-level applications, offering both computational efficiency and robust classification capabilities.

cs.SD↗

arXiv2025

Major-Minor Mean Field Game of Stopping: An Entropy Regularization Approach

This paper studies a discrete-time major-minor mean field game of stopping where the major player can choose either an optimal control or stopping time. We look for the relaxed equilibrium as a randomized stopping policy, which is formulated as a fixed point of a set-valued mapping, whose existence is challenging by direct arguments. To overcome the difficulties caused by the presence of a major player, we propose to study an auxiliary problem by considering entropy regularization in the major player's problem while formulating the minor players' optimal stopping problems as linear programming over occupation measures. We first show the existence of regularized equilibria as fixed points of some simplified set-valued operator using the Kakutani-Fan-Glicksberg fixed-point theorem. Next, we prove that the regularized equilibrium converges as the regularization parameter $λ$ tends to 0, and the limit corresponds to a fixed point of the original operator, thereby confirming the existence of a relaxed equilibrium in the original mean field game problem. We also extend this entropy regularization method to the mean-field game problem where the minor players choose optimal controls.

math.OC↗

arXiv2025

Domain Wall Sliding-induced Polarization Switching in Multilayer Graphene

Electric polarization and metallicity are long believed not to coexist until the emergence of exceptionally rare material examples including the bulk polar metals and more recently two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) materials such as 1T' WTe2. The electric polarization for the latter represents a new and distinguishable paradigm in materials science and physics because its electric polarization states embedded in the conduction electron sea are able to couple with (and controlled by) the external electric field. However, the microscopic polarization switching process and mechanism in these 2D vdW metallic materials have not been experimentally observed and remain elusive. Here, we report the first direct experimental imaging of the microscopic mechanism behind electric-field-coupled polarization switching in a metallic system. Our gate-tunable nanoscale optical imaging identifies the robust coexistence of electric polarization and appreciable carrier densities in adjacent polar domains hosting opposite electric polarizations in a 2D elemental metallic material, tetralayer graphene. We directly visualize and verify that the sliding domain wall (DW) solitons confined at the middlemost interface are responsible for the polarization switching in tetralayer graphene upon the application of electric fields and mechanical forces. Our work provides the first direct visualization of domain wall sliding-induced polarization switching in 2D elemental carbon at room temperature, significantly expanding and advancing the research of "ferroelectric metal" initially dubbed by P. W. Anderson and coauthors in 1965.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Amorphous phase-change memory alloy with no resistance drift

Spontaneous structural relaxation is intrinsic to glassy materials due to their metastable nature. For phase-change materials (PCMs), the resultant temporal change in electrical resistance seriously hamper in-memory computing (IMC) applications. Here, we report an ab-initio-calculation-informed design of amorphous PCM composed of robust "molecule-like" motifs with minimal Peierls distortion, depriving the amorphous alloy of structural ingredients that would gradually evolve upon aging to entail resistance drift. We demonstrate amorphous CrTe3 thin films that display practically no resistance drift at any working temperature from -200 to 165 degree C. We achieve multilevel programming of CrTe3 through both step-wise crystallization and step-wise amorphization using a hybrid opto-electronic device at various temperatures. Moreover, the application potential of CrTe3 in neuromorphic computing is testified by its incorporation in a vehicle with automatic path-tracking function. Our work opens a new avenue to achieving IMC-requisite properties via judicious design of the composition and atomic-level structure of disordered PCM alloys.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2025

Simultaneous Sieve Estimation and Inference for Time-Varying Nonlinear Time Series Regression

In this paper, we investigate time-varying nonlinear time series regression for a broad class of locally stationary time series. First, we propose sieve nonparametric estimators for the time-varying regression functions that achieve uniform consistency. Second, we develop a unified simultaneous inferential theory to conduct both structural and exact form tests on these functions. Additionally, we introduce a multiplier bootstrap procedure for practical implementation. Our methodology and theory require only mild assumptions on the regression functions, allow for unbounded domain support, and effectively address the issue of identifiability for practical interpretation. Technically, we establish sieve approximation theory for 2-D functions in unbounded domains, prove two Gaussian approximation results for affine forms of high-dimensional locally stationary time series, and calculate critical values for the maxima of the Gaussian random field arising from locally stationary time series, which may be of independent interest. Numerical simulations and two data analyses support our results, and we have developed an $\mathtt{R}$ package, $\mathtt{SIMle}$, to facilitate implementation.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2025

Wasserstein and Convex Gaussian Approximations for Non-stationary Time Series of Diverging Dimensionality

In high-dimensional time series analysis, Gaussian approximation (GA) schemes under various distance measures or on various collections of subsets of the Euclidean space play a fundamental role in a wide range of statistical inference problems. To date, most GA results for high-dimensional time series are established on hyper-rectangles and their equivalence. In this paper, by considering the 2-Wasserstein distance and the collection of all convex sets, we establish a general GA theory for a broad class of high-dimensional non-stationary (HDNS) time series, extending the scope of problems that can be addressed in HDNS time series analysis. For HDNS time series of sufficiently weak dependence and light tail, the GA rates established in this paper are either nearly optimal with respect to the dimensionality and time series length, or they are nearly identical to the corresponding best-known GA rates established for independent data. A multiplier bootstrap procedure is utilized and theoretically justified to implement our GA theory. We demonstrate by two previously undiscussed time series applications the use of the GA theory and the bootstrap procedure as unified tools for a wide range of statistical inference problems in HDNS time series analysis.

math.ST↗

arXiv2025

MuGrid-v2: A novel scintillator detector for multidisciplinary applications

Muography, traditionally recognized as a potent instrument for imaging the internal structure of gigantic objects, has initialized various interdisciplinary applications. As the financial and labor costs of muography detector development hinder their massive applications, we develop a novel muon detector called MuGrid by coupling a monolithic plastic scintillator with the light guide array in order to achieve competitive spatial resolution while substantially reducing production costs. For a prototype detector in 30 cm $\times$ 30 cm, the intrinsic spatial resolution has been optimized toward a millimeter scale. An outdoor field muography experiment was conducted to monitor two buildings for validation purposes. The test successfully resolved the geometric influence of architectural features based on the attenuation of muon flux in a good agreement between experimental results and the simulation prediction.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2025

Switching to a Green and sustainable finance setting: a mean field game approach

We consider a continuum of carbon-emitting firms who seek to maximise their stock price, and a regulator (e.g., Government) who wishes for the economy to flourish, whilst simultaneously punishing firms who behave non-green. Interpreting the regulator as a major player and the firms as the minor players, we model this setting through a mean field game with major and minor players. We extend the stochastic maximum principle derived by Carmona & Zhu [A probabilistic approach to mean field games with major and minor players. Annals of Applied Probability, 2016, 94, 745--788] by relaxing the assumptions on the forms of the minimisers for the Hamiltonians, allowing them to depend on more arguments. This allows the major and representative minor player to interact in a more natural fashion, thereby permitting us to consider more realistic models for our green and sustainable finance problem. Through our stochastic maximum principle, we derive explicit Nash equilibria for a number of examples.

math.PR↗

arXiv2025

Flexible Full-Stokes Polarization Engineering by Disorder-Scrambled Metasurfaces

Abstract: The ability to arbitrarily and flexibly control the polarization of light, including both the state of polarization (SoP) and the degree of polarization (DoP), is highly important for quantum optics, polarization imaging, and coherent optical communications. Although metasurfaces have shown promise in polarization control, the few studies focusing on the DoP often lack flexibility in manipulation. Here, we propose a novel approach using a disordered metasurface to flexibly convert natural light into partially polarized light, enabling independent and flexible control over all Stokes parameters. The metasurface is composed of two types of meta-atoms, uniformly distributed with specific quantity ratios, decoupling the design parameters in the process of polarization control, and allowing a one-to-one correspondence between metasurface and polarization spaces. The azimuthal and elevation angles of the SoP on the Poincaré sphere are independently controlled by the meta-atom rotation and size, while the DoP is governed by the quantity ratio. A developed algorithm determines the disordered metasurface arrangement, with theoretical calculations showing an average error of less than 3° for both the azimuthal and elevation angles and a control accuracy of \pm 0.05 for the DoP.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2024

Binomial-tree approximation for time-inconsistent stopping

For time-inconsistent stopping in a one-dimensional diffusion setup, we investigate how to use discrete-time models to approximate the original problem. In particular, we consider the value function $V(\cdot)$ induced by all mild equilibria in the continuous-time problem, as well as the value $V^h(\cdot)$ associated with the equilibria in a binomial-tree setting with time step size $h$. We show that $\lim_{h\rightarrow 0+} V^h \leq V$. We provide an example showing that the exact convergence may fail. Then we relax the set of equilibria and consider the value $V^h_{\varepsilon}(\cdot)$ induced by $\varepsilon$-equilibria in the binomial-tree model. We prove that $\lim_{\varepsilon \rightarrow 0+}\lim_{h \rightarrow 0+}V^h_{\varepsilon} = V$.

math.OC↗

arXiv2024

Convergence of Policy Iteration for Entropy-Regularized Stochastic Control Problems

For a general entropy-regularized stochastic control problem on an infinite horizon, we prove that a policy iteration algorithm (PIA) converges to an optimal relaxed control. Contrary to the standard stochastic control literature, classical Hölder estimates of value functions do not ensure the convergence of the PIA, due to the added entropy-regularizing term. To circumvent this, we carry out a delicate estimation by moving back and forth between appropriate Hölder and Sobolev spaces. This requires new Sobolev estimates designed specifically for the purpose of policy iteration and a nontrivial technique to contain the entropy growth. Ultimately, we obtain a uniform Hölder bound for the sequence of value functions generated by the PIA, thereby achieving the desired convergence result. Characterization of the optimal value function as the unique solution to an exploratory Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation comes as a by-product. The PIA is numerically implemented in an example of optimal consumption.

math.OC↗

arXiv2024

Relaxed Equilibria for Time-Inconsistent Markov Decision Processes

This paper considers an infinite-horizon Markov decision process (MDP) that allows for general non-exponential discount functions, in both discrete and continuous time. Due to the inherent time inconsistency, we look for a randomized equilibrium policy (i.e., relaxed equilibrium) in an intra-personal game between an agent's current and future selves. When we modify the MDP by entropy regularization, a relaxed equilibrium is shown to exist by a nontrivial entropy estimate. As the degree of regularization diminishes, the entropy-regularized MDPs approximate the original MDP, which gives the general existence of a relaxed equilibrium in the limit by weak convergence arguments. As opposed to prior studies that consider only deterministic policies, our existence of an equilibrium does not require any convexity (or concavity) of the controlled transition probabilities and reward function. Interestingly, this benefit of considering randomized policies is unique to the time-inconsistent case.

math.OC↗

arXiv2024

Gaussian Approximation and Output Analysis for High-Dimensional MCMC

The widespread use of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods for high-dimensional applications has motivated research into the scalability of these algorithms with respect to the dimension of the problem. Despite this, numerous problems concerning output analysis in high-dimensional settings have remained unaddressed. We present novel quantitative Gaussian approximation results for a broad range of MCMC algorithms. Notably, we analyse the dependency of the obtained approximation errors on the dimension of both the target distribution and the feature space. We demonstrate how these Gaussian approximations can be applied in output analysis. This includes determining the simulation effort required to guarantee Markov chain central limit theorems and consistent estimation of the variance and effective sample size in high-dimensional settings. We give quantitative convergence bounds for termination criteria and show that the termination time of a wide class of MCMC algorithms scales polynomially in dimension while ensuring a desired level of precision. Our results offer guidance to practitioners for obtaining appropriate standard errors and deciding the minimum simulation effort of MCMC algorithms in both multivariate and high-dimensional settings.

stat.CO↗

arXiv2024

Selective Excitation of Bloch Modes in Canalized Polaritonic Crystals

Polaritonic crystals (PoCs) have experienced significant advancements through involving hyperbolic polaritons in anisotropic materials such as $α$-MoO$_{\rm 3}$, offering a promising approach for nanoscale light control and improved light-matter interactions. Notably, twisted bilayer $α$-MoO$_{\rm 3}$ enables tunable iso-frequency contours (IFCs), especially generating flat IFCs at certain twist angles, which could enhance mode selectivity in their PoCs through the highly collimated and canalized polaritons. This study unveils the selective excitation of Bloch modes in PoCs with square-lattice structures on twisted bilayer $α$-MoO$_{\rm 3}$ with canalized phonon polaritons. Through the optimization of the square lattice design, there is an effective redistribution of canalized polaritons into the reciprocal lattices of PoCs. Fine-tuning the periodicity and orientation of the hole lattice enables momentum matching between flat IFCs and co-linear reciprocal points, allowing precise and directional control over desired Bragg resonances and Bloch modes. This research establishes a versatile platform for tunable polaritonic devices and paves the way for advanced photonic applications.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2024

Differences between Two Maximal Principal Strain Rate Calculation Schemes in Traumatic Brain Analysis with in-vivo and in-silico Datasets

Brain deformation caused by a head impact leads to traumatic brain injury (TBI). The maximum principal strain (MPS) was used to measure the extent of brain deformation and predict injury, and the recent evidence has indicated that incorporating the maximum principal strain rate (MPSR) and the product of MPS and MPSR, denoted as MPSxSR, enhances the accuracy of TBI prediction. However, ambiguities have arisen about the calculation of MPSR. Two schemes have been utilized: one (MPSR1) is to use the time derivative of MPS, and another (MPSR2) is to use the first eigenvalue of the strain rate tensor. Both MPSR1 and MPSR2 have been applied in previous studies to predict TBI. To quantify the discrepancies between these two methodologies, we conducted a comparison of these two MPSR methodologies across nine in-vivo and in-silico head impact datasets and found that 95MPSR1 was 5.87% larger than 95MPSR2, and 95MPSxSR1 was 2.55% larger than 95MPSxSR2. Across every element in all head impacts, MPSR1 was 8.28% smaller than MPSR2, and MPSxSR1 was 8.11% smaller than MPSxSR2. Furthermore, logistic regression models were trained to predict TBI based on the MPSR (or MPSxSR), and no significant difference was observed in the predictability across different variables. The consequence of misuse of MPSR and MPSxSR thresholds (i.e. compare threshold of 95MPSR1 with value from 95MPSR2 to determine if the impact is injurious) was investigated, and the resulting false rates were found to be around 1%. The evidence suggested that these two methodologies were not significantly different in detecting TBI.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2024

Self-convolved Bootstrap for M-regression under Complex Temporal Dynamics

The paper considers simultaneous nonparametric inference for a wide class of M-regression models with time-varying coefficients. The covariates and errors of the regression model are tackled as a general class of nonstationary time series and are allowed to be cross-dependent. A novel and easy-to-implement self-convolved bootstrap procedure is proposed. With only one tuning parameter, the bootstrap facilitates a $\sqrt{n}$-consistent inference of the cumulative regression function for the M-estimators under complex temporal dynamics, even under the possible presence of breakpoints in time series. Our methodology leads to a unified framework to conduct general classes of Exact Function Tests, Lack-of-fit Tests, and Qualitative Tests for the time-varying coefficients. These tests enable one to, among many others, conduct variable selection, check for constancy and linearity, as well as verify shape assumptions, including monotonicity and convexity. As applications, our method is utilized to study the time-varying properties of global climate data and Microsoft stock return, respectively.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2024

Simultaneous Inference for Non-Stationary Random Fields, with Application to Gridded Data Analysis

Current statistics literature on statistical inference of random fields typically assumes that the fields are stationary or focuses on models of non-stationary Gaussian fields with parametric/semiparametric covariance families, which may not be sufficiently flexible to tackle complex modern-era random field data. This paper performs simultaneous nonparametric statistical inference for a general class of non-stationary and non-Gaussian random fields by modeling the fields as nonlinear systems with location-dependent transformations of an underlying `shift random field'. Asymptotic results, including concentration inequalities and Gaussian approximation theorems for high dimensional sparse linear forms of the random field, are derived. A computationally efficient locally weighted multiplier bootstrap algorithm is proposed and theoretically verified as a unified tool for the simultaneous inference of the aforementioned non-stationary non-Gaussian random field. Simulations and real-life data examples demonstrate good performances and broad applications of the proposed algorithm.

math.ST↗

arXiv2024

High-Capacity Metasurface at Limits of Polarization and Wavelength Multiplexing

Polarization and wavelength multiplexing are the two most widely employed techniques to improve the capacity in the metasurfaces. Existing works have pushed each technique to its individual limits. For example, the polarization multiplexing channels working at a single wavelength have been significantly increased by using noise engineering. However, it is still challenging to achieve the multiplexing limits of wavelength and polarization simultaneously. Besides, such multiplexing methods suffer from computational inefficiencies, hindering their application in tasks like image recognition that require extensive training computation. In this work, we introduce a gradient-based optimization algorithm using deep neural network (DNN) to achieve the limits of both polarization and wavelength multiplexing with high computational efficiency. We experimentally demonstrate this capability, achieving a record-breaking capacity of 15 holographic images across five wavelengths and the maximum of three independent polarization channels, as well as 18 holographic images across three wavelengths and six corelated polarization channels. Moreover, leveraging the high computational efficiency of our DNN-based method, which is well-suited for processing large datasets, we implement large-scale image recognition tasks across 36 classes encoded in a record of nine multiplexed channels (three wavelengths * three polarizations), achieving 96% classification accuracy in calculations and 91.5% in experiments. This work sets a new benchmark for high-capacity multiplexing with metasurfaces and demonstrates the power of gradient-based inverse design for realizing multi-functional optical elements.

physics.optics↗