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Qian Li

Publications and source records attributed to Qian Li.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Hindsight Memory-PRM: Supervising Memory Management with Auditable Hindsight Credit

Memory operations of long-horizon LLM agents are hard to supervise: an operation's value is unobservable when it is taken. But they are special -- they leave machine-readable evidence in the trajectory: retrieval hits and answer-time citations. Hindsight Memory-PRM exploits this audit trail twice: offline to train an operation-conditioned memory-utility critic, and online, where retrievals, citations, and one controlled deletion-and-reanswer per probe settle an intervention-calibrated entry-level presence credit, propagated along version chains as an action-level proxy reward -- no per-operation human labels, no Monte-Carlo replay of continuations. On held-out LoCoMo a local 8B policy reaches 77.5% under a fixed shared reader, surpassing its API teacher (65.1%) and all reproduced external systems, at one eighth the context of Mem0's official operating point; on LongMemEval, 79.0%. Ablations attribute the gain to causal calibration rather than signal density, and the policy converges to a multi-version memory organization whose gains no tested open-loop baseline reproduces.

cs.CL↗

A Target-Centric Survey of Quantization-Aware Training

The rapid development of LLMs incurs prohibitive memory footprints and intensive computational demands. Quantization-Aware Training (QAT) techniques have emerged as a promising solution to address these challenges by explicitly simulating quantization effects during model training, yielding low-bit models that achieve accuracy comparable to their full-precision counterparts. In this work, we provide a target-centric survey of QAT, aimed at clarifying both its theoretical foundations and its evolving implementation landscape. We systematically review existing QAT methods through a target-centric taxonomy and synthesize cross-target differences in error characteristics, numerical formats, and strategy transferability. We further summarize QAT evaluation paradigms and discuss challenges in optimization and deployment, outlining potential directions for future research.

cs.LG↗

Test-time Reinforcement Learning for Anomalous Video Understanding

Anomalous video understanding aims to identify abnormal events in videos and interpret their semantic meanings beyond simple anomaly detection. Recent video large language models (Video-LLMs) have demonstrated promising zero-shot capabilities for this task, yet their performance remains limited due to insufficient adaptation to diverse anomaly patterns and evolving environments. Test-time reinforcement learning offers a promising solution by enabling models to improve through self-generated feedback signals without requiring additional human annotations. However, applying it to anomalous video understanding remains challenging due to three issues: (1) generated pseudo-labels can be unreliable when consensus is weak; (2) binary reward designs fail to capture uncertainty in model generations, resulting in ineffective optimization signals; and (3) unanimous rollout groups receive identical rewards, causing group-relative advantages to collapse and eliminating effective policy-gradient signals. To address these challenges, we present a novel test-time reinforcement learning framework for anomalous video understanding by introducing dual-query consistency filtering, an entropy-aware consensus reward, and a virtual negative anchor mechanism. The framework retains reliable samples through consistency across semantically equivalent queries, combines answer agreement with generation uncertainty for reward estimation, and introduces a virtual negative anchor to create reward variation in unanimous rollout groups, thereby preserving effective group-relative optimization signals. Experiments on VAU-Bench show that our method outperforms the compared frozen and supervised baselines. The gains are most pronounced on the ECVA subset of VAU-Bench with thinking, where accuracy improves from 75.81% to 90.00% relative to the frozen backbone.

cs.CV↗

Radiation properties and images of loop quantum Reissner-Nordström black hole with a thin accretion disk

We investigate the characteristics of circular motion of charged particles around loop quantum Reissner-Nordström black hole (LQRNBH) and the radiation properties and observational appearance of a thin accretion disk around it. By calculating the shadow radius and utilizing observational data from M87* and Sgr A*, we derive constraints on the quantum parameter $ζ$ and charge parameter $Q$. In order to support a accretion disk around the black hole, the charge parameter $Q$ is restricted to be tiny ($Q\lesssim10^{-21}$). The circular motion of charged particles around LQRNBH and the influence of the model parameters on the circular motion are studied. It is found that although the direct charge correction to the geometry is negligible, the electromagnetic coupling $κ$ substantially impacts the circular motion and the radiative properties. Then, by considering a thin accretion disk model, the local radiation fluxes, redshift factors and the observed fluxes are studied. With the ray-tracing method, the isoradial curves, direct images of redshift factors and the observed fluxes are illustrated. The influence of the model parameters on these quantities are systematically performed. It is found that the influence of the quantum parameter $ζ$ is generally very small but whether its a positive or negative effect depends on the sign of $κ$, i.e. attractive or repulsive electromagnetic force. Although the charge of the black hole is tiny in our study, the electromagnetic interaction generally has significant influence on the physical quantities.

gr-qc↗

Polarization Vortices in a Ferromagnetic Metal via Twistronics

Recent advances in moire engineering provide new pathways for manipulating lattice distortions and electronic properties in low-dimensional materials. Here, we demonstrate that twisted stacking can induce dipolar vortices in metallic SrRuO3 membranes, despite the presence of free charges that would normally screen depolarizing fields and dipole-dipole interactions. These polarization vortices are correlated with moire-periodic flexoelectricity induced by shear strain gradients, and exhibit a pronounced dependence on the twist angle. In addition, multiferroic behavior emerges below the ferromagnetic Curie temperature of the films, whereby polarization and ferromagnetism coexist and compete, showing opposite twist-angle dependencies of their respective magnitudes. Density functional theory calculations provide insights into the microscopic origin of these observations. Our findings extend the scope of polarization topology design beyond dielectric materials and into metals.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

KnowHal: A Knowledge-Driven Benchmark for Comprehensive Multimodal Hallucination Evaluation

Hallucination remains a critical challenge for developing trustworthy Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs). While existing benchmarks mainly focus on entity, attribute, and relation hallucinations, knowledge-related failures are often investigated separately, lacking a unified evaluation framework across different hallucination dimensions. To overcome this, we propose \textbf{KnowHal}, a benchmark that explicitly incorporates knowledge hallucination into multimodal hallucination evaluation spanning four dimensions: entity, attribute, relation, and knowledge. KnowHal constructs paired positive and negative questions over shared images and entities, enabling controlled comparisons among perceptual errors, knowledge-related errors, and false-premise acceptance. The benchmark contains 1,800 samples across 10 domains and 50 categories, constructed through a semi-automated pipeline combining LLM assistance, CLIP-based filtering, and human verification. We evaluate 14 representative MLLMs on KnowHal and conduct extensive analyses. Results show that the knowledge dimension consistently presents the greatest challenge for nearly all evaluated models, while most models exhibit substantial performance degradation on negative questions, revealing limited robustness to false premises. By unifying four hallucination dimensions with paired question design, KnowHal addresses an important gap in existing evaluation frameworks and enables a more comprehensive assessment of hallucinations in MLLMs.

cs.AI↗

Impossibility of Perfectly Complete Many-Round Key Agreement in the QROM

This paper proves that it is impossible to construct perfectly complete quantum key agreement protocols (QKA) from quantumly secure one-way functions (OWFs) in a black-box manner. Specifically, consider any protocol in which Alice and Bob exchange only classical messages, make at most $q_{\mathsf{A}}$ and $q_{\mathsf{B}}$ quantum queries, respectively, to a Boolean-valued random oracle, and agree on a shared key with certainty. This paper shows that there exists an eavesdropper, given the classical messages, that can recover the shared key with certainty using $O((q_{\mathsf{A}}+q_{\mathsf{B}})^5)$ classical oracle queries. The bound is independent of the number of rounds, transcript length, key length, and oracle-domain size. Previous results only applies to two-round key agreement (Li et al. CRYPTO 26) or relies on unproven conjectures (Austrin et al. CRYPTO 22). GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra found this proof in a one-shot conversation and drafted a preliminary version of this paper. The authors are fully responsible for the correctness, writing and discussions of this paper.

quant-ph↗

BRiG-AFA: Bellman Risk-to-Go Learning for Non-Myopic Active Feature Acquisition

Active feature acquisition (AFA) asks which unobserved feature to measure next for each test instance under a budget. Greedy rules are easy to train but can overlook context features whose value is realized only through later acquisitions, while reinforcement-learning and generative approaches introduce difficult optimization or conditional-density estimation. We introduce \method, a deployable, supervised alternative that learns a separate candidate-conditioned risk-to-go function for every remaining budget. Starting from the one-step terminal classification risk, the functions are fitted backward with Bellman targets; inference greedily minimizes the learned terminal risk using only observed values, the mask, candidate identity, and remaining budget. A controlled non-myopic benchmark shows the expected mechanism: at budgets two and three, \method improves accuracy over its one-step ablation by $4.84\pm2.17$ and $4.39\pm1.10$ percentage points (mean $\pm$ standard error over five seeds). On Fashion-MNIST with 20 candidate pixels, it improves accuracy at every nontrivial reported budget on average, including $10.20\pm0.74$ points at four acquisitions; its mean paired gain across budgets $\{2,4,8,12,16\}$ is $3.50\pm0.37$ points. A three-seed MiniBooNE study is mixed at small budgets but positive at 8 and 16 acquisitions, identifying a current boundary rather than supporting a universal claim. These results establish a reproducible mechanism-level case for direct Bellman risk regression and delimit the experiments still needed for state-of-the-art comparison.

cs.LG↗

The User Asks, Platforms Compete: How Agentic Recommendation Markets Take Shape

Online recommendation has traditionally taken place after a user enters a platform, which determines the candidate pool and the ranking shown to the user. LLM-based user agents enable a different recommendation process: a user specifies a need before choosing a platform, leaving platforms to compete for the user's attention, which we refer to as an agentic recommendation market. In our controlled LLM-based experiments across three product domains, we find this new setting of recommendation creates a tension between access and attention. Compared with traditional platform-centric recommendation, user-centric recommendation greatly expands the opportunity for relevant items to enter comparison; yet broader participation does not translate directly into effective exposure. Competition directly triggers platforms' strategic play: selectively positive explanations occupy 73--78% of first-ranked positions. When the user agent relates platforms' actions to subsequent user feedback, this share falls to 36--41%, while the chance of a user purchasing the relevant item increases. A user agent is therefore more than a ranker over a larger pool of candidates: its querying, ranking, and feedback mechanism governing who can compete, how scarce attention is allocated, and how earlier outcomes shape the evaluation of platforms directly affect user utility. Designing agentic recommendation therefore requires treating access, attention, and accountability as a joint mechanism design problem.

cs.AI↗

A Cybersecurity MLPS Large Language Model with Multi-Path Retrieval Fusion

The Multi-Level Protection Scheme (MLPS) is a foundational system in China's cybersecurity governance framework. Therefore, accurate analysis and understanding of MLPS requirements are essential. At present, MLPS analysis still relies mainly on manual interpretation of standards and rule-based tools. This makes it hard to provide stable and consistent compliance analysis in complex application scenarios. The rise of large language models has created new opportunities for making MLPS work more intelligent. However, in standards-intensive and security-sensitive scenarios, general-purpose large language models often cannot ensure controllable reasoning or complete understanding of rules. This paper proposes a large language model framework for MLPS that integrates multiple retrieval strategies. It combines hierarchical retrieval, tree-based retrieval, and tokenization-based matching retrieval. This design helps maintain retrieval coverage while reducing the interference of irrelevant context in the reasoning process. To address the requirements of MLPS question answering for clause accuracy, conclusion traceability, and practical deployability, this paper adopts a evaluation method based on multi-dimensional weighted scoring to quantitatively assess model responses. In comparative experiments on ten typical questions, the proposed domain-specific large language model for MLPS achieved higher overall scores.

cs.CR↗

Global Existence and Pathwise Uniqueness for a Stochastic Parabolic-Parabolic Keller-Segel System

In this paper, we study a stochastic parabolic-parabolic Keller-Segel system driven by nonlocal, nonlinear multiplicative noise in a two-dimensional bounded domain. Under suitable assumptions, we establish global existence and pathwise uniqueness of a strong solution for arbitrary initial data, without imposing any smallness conditions. This sharply contrasts with the deterministic two-dimensional Keller-Segel system, which typically requires smallness assumptions on initial mass. The main analytical challenges stem from the fully parabolic coupling, combined with a lack of coercivity and global Lipschitz continuity in both the chemotactic drift and noise terms. To overcome this, we introduce a tailored truncated system to establish local existence via Banach's fixed point theorem. Using this local existence and pathwise uniqueness, we construct a maximal local strong solution. Finally, by introducing a specialized Lyapunov functional, we derive uniform estimates to extend this solution globally.

math.AP↗

Silicon-compatible ideal antiferroelectricity with large digital electromechanical responses enabled by thermal-strain domain engineering

Antiferroelectrics exhibit reversible antipolar-polar transformations, offering a compelling platform for multiple functionalities in modern nanoelectronics, yet deterministic control of antiferroelectric domains and switching pathways remain elusive. Moreover, their integration with ubiquitous silicon-based electronic devices has been limited by the structural and chemical incompatibilities of conventional oxide platforms. Here, we convert the conventional drawback of thermal mismatch into a functional advantage and realize ideal antiferroelectricity in epitaxial PbZrO3 thin films on silicon through thermal tensile-strain engineering, a strain regime unattainable on conventional perovskite substrates. Combined theoretical and experimental studies show that tensile strain stabilizes the (004)o domain, enabling a direct one-step switching, whereas compressive-strain-stabilized (240)o domains switch through intermediate ferrielectric states. The resulting films exhibit near-zero remanent polarization, square double hysteresis, nanosecond switching (~75ns), large reversible electrostrain (~0.6%) and robust operation windows. These findings provide key insights into domain-engineered ideal antiferroelectricity on silicon, opening a viable route toward high-performance antiferroelectric nano-electronic devices.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

Sensing-Assisted Predictive Beamforming for UAV-Enabled Ocean Monitoring Networks

This paper investigates a sensing-assisted predictive beamforming framework for UAV--buoy maritime monitoring by explicitly accounting for wave-induced buoy dynamics and residual sea clutter. A frame-based UAV mission workflow is first established, where the UAV transmits integrated sensing and communication signals to acquire buoy echoes and to support subsequent uplink beam alignment. To characterize short-horizon buoy motion, a correlated-acceleration state-space model is developed by combining a Singer process for wave-driven excitation with a slowly varying current-drift term. Given the resulting nonlinear reflection, Doppler, and delay measurements, the posterior Fisher information matrix and the corresponding posterior Cramér--Rao bound (PCRB) are derived, and the predicted horizontal-position PCRB is adopted as the sensing metric. A per-frame worst-buoy design is then formulated to jointly optimize sensing power allocation and UAV position under uplink-rate, UAV-power, and mobility constraints. By exploiting a Schur-complement reformulation and a lagged successive convex approximation, the resulting subproblem is converted into a convex conic program with tractable complexity. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme maintains robust prediction and communication performance under denser buoy deployments and harsher sea conditions, and outperforms several baseline designs. In particular, the pronounced root mean square error (RMSE) degradation of the communication-only benchmark confirms that sensing-assisted state refinement is essential for accurate predictive beamforming in dynamic maritime environments. Compared with a full first-order Taylor expansion method, it achieves a more attractive performance--complexity tradeoff for online deployment.

eess.SP↗

A Deterministic Forensic Preprocessing Framework for Heterogeneous Network Datasets: Formal Foundations, Implementation, and Empirical Validation

Digital forensic investigations increasingly depend on preprocessing heterogeneous network evidence from intrusion detection systems, IoT devices, and enterprise traffic logs. Incompatible schemas and timestamp formats hinder evidence correlation and timeline reconstruction, while current ad hoc approaches offer no mechanism to verify consistency across runs or analysis, creating reproducibility gaps that challenge evidence admissibility. This paper introduces a deterministic forensic preprocessing framework that converts heterogeneous network datasets into a reproducible canonical form. The framework formalises three preprocessing transformations: schema normalisation, temporal normalisation, and provenance tracking. These transformations are specified using set-theoretic definitions and supported by four theorems establishing determinism, information preservation, and provenance completeness. A chunk-based architecture provides O(c) bounded memory. Empirical evaluation across UNSW-NB15, IoT-23, and TON_IoT demonstrates 100% output consistency across repeated runs, robust temporal normalisation completeness over heterogeneous timestamp formats, and scalable performance from millions to hundreds of millions of records.

cs.CR↗

Martingale Solutions to a Stochastic Keller-Segel System with nonlocal Source and Super-linear Noise

Global nonnegative martingale solutions are shown to exist for a stochastic Keller-Segel system with a nonlocal Fisher-KPP source and super-linear multiplicative noise. The result is obtained for nonnegative initial data with no smallness assumption, provided that the nonlocal source term is dominant. The main difficulty stems from the absence of a coercive structure and the super-linear nature of the noise. An additional cut-off with finite L^2 norm in the classical Galerkin method is added to establish a well-posed approximation problem. Moreover, due to the nonlocal Fisher-KPP structure, it is necessary to prove the positivity of the approximating solution in order to obtain uniform estimates. In the compactness arguments, the usual tightness argument in the framework of Hilbert spaces cannot be directly applied to the uniform estimates obtained in this paper. As a result, we develop a more general version of the compactness argument and tightness criterion, presented in the appendix, which will be applied throughout the paper. This allows for the global existence of nonnegative martingale solutions to be derived from Jakubowski's version of the Skorokhod Theorem, along with a thorough discussion of the convergence properties.

math.PR↗

A Survey of Heterogeneous Graph Neural Networks for Cybersecurity Anomaly Detection

Anomaly detection is a critical task in cybersecurity, where identifying insider threats, access violations, and coordinated attacks is essential for ensuring system resilience. Graph-based approaches have become increasingly important for modeling entity interactions, yet most rely on homogeneous and static structures, which limits their ability to capture the heterogeneity and temporal evolution of real-world environments. Heterogeneous Graph Neural Networks (HGNNs) have emerged as a promising paradigm for anomaly detection by incorporating type-aware transformations and relation-sensitive aggregation, enabling more expressive modeling of complex cyber data. However, current research on HGNN-based anomaly detection remains fragmented, with diverse modeling strategies, limited comparative evaluation, and an absence of standardized benchmarks. To address this gap, we provide a comprehensive survey of HGNN-based anomaly detection methods in cybersecurity. We introduce a taxonomy that classifies approaches by anomaly type and graph dynamics, analyze representative models, and map them to key cybersecurity applications. We also review commonly used benchmark datasets and evaluation metrics, highlighting their strengths and limitations. Finally, we identify key open challenges related to modeling, data, and deployment, and outline promising directions for future research. This survey aims to establish a structured foundation for advancing HGNN-based anomaly detection toward scalable, interpretable, and practically deployable solutions.

cs.CR↗

Prediction Under Imperfect Compression: A Theory of Approximate MDL

Minimum Description Length (MDL) formalizes the principle of Occam's razor by optimizing the total description length: $L(\mathrm{model})+L(\mathrm{data} \ | \ \mathrm{model})$. For sequential prediction, the MDL method repeatedly selects a model with a minimum objective score of the observed prefix for the next step prediction. Classical MDL prediction theory shows that exact optimization of the MDL objective indeed provides a strong compression guarantee that supports reliable prediction. However, practical machine learning usually can only find models by approximately optimizing the objective function. To bridge this gap, this paper addresses the following fundamental question: Under what forms of approximation and regularization does approximate MDL still guarantee reliable sequential prediction? This work offers a principled characterization. We prove that for any approximation with additive slack $C$ of the more general form of the balanced MDL objective: $λ\cdot L(\mathrm{model})+L(\mathrm{data} \ | \ \mathrm{model})$, the cumulative expected squared prediction error is finite for all $λ\ge1$. The case $λ>1$ is proved by an affinity-telescoping argument, while the boundary case $λ=1$ is proved by a likelihood-ratio stopping argument based on exact static MDL bounds. Our results establish that classical MDL regularization remains robust to any fixed additive optimization error. Furthermore, we establish that our characterization of the approximate MDL framework is sharp: When $0<λ<1$, overfits can happen to incur infinite cumulative expected error in the universal class of estimable measures, and hence a strong form of model-complexity regularization is necessary. In addition, model selection may fail in every regularized regime $λ>0$, under multiplicative approximation, and thus, additive approximation is both sufficient and essential.

cs.LG↗

Rethinking the Role of Positional Encoding: Sliding-Window Transformers without PE Remain Turing Complete

Positional encoding (PE) is widely viewed as necessary for transformers to process ordered sequences: without them, the next-token map appears permutation-invariant in its context tokens. This intuition underlies all prior universality results, which rely on positional information to prove that transformers with chain-of-thought can perform arbitrary computation, i.e., they are Turing complete. We revisit this belief in the regime most relevant to long-form reasoning, where generation proceeds through a finite sliding context window. Our opening perception is that the window mechanism itself (mildly) breaks the permutation symmetry. To distill and precisely capture the degree of this added expressiveness, we introduce an abstract autoregressive model, the HIST model, in which each update depends only on constant-size internal state and the token-count histogram within the current window. We prove that this HIST model is Turing complete by showing that the evolution of the window can reveal the token that has just left the window, which suffices to simulate Turing-complete Post machines. We then construct a sliding-window transformer over a constant-size token alphabet, without PE, and show that it can simulate the HIST model. Our result demonstrates that positional encodings are not indispensable for transformers to perform universal computation: The window sliding itself already breaks permutation symmetry and captures sufficient positional information.

cs.LG↗