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Rui Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Rui Zhang.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

Learning Agent Execution for KV-Cache Management in Agentic Serving

Multi-agent LLM systems have emerged as an important deployment paradigm for AI services, where each user request is decomposed into a sequence of specialized agents. Across these workflows, every agent repeatedly executes a fixed context consisting of system prompts, tool definitions, and few-shot examples, creating substantial opportunities for KV-cache reuse. Existing LLM serving systems, however, manage KV-cache reactively using prefix caching and recency-based replacement, causing reusable agent contexts to be evicted before their next invocation and forcing repeated recomputation. We present CacheScout, an agent-aware KV-cache runtime layer for multi-agent LLM serving. The key insight is that future KV-cache reuse is governed by agent execution semantics rather than cache recency alone. CacheScout captures these semantics by learning agent execution transitions online, without requiring predefined workflow graphs or offline training, and uses the learned execution model to guide both cache eviction and proactive prefetching while leaving the serving critical path unchanged. We implement CacheScout on top of vLLM. Across representative real-world multi-agent workloads, CacheScout improves KV-cache hit rate by 10-18 percentage points, reduces mean TTFT by 18-45%, lowers mean per-turn latency by 29-38%, and increases peak throughput by up to 57%. These benefits also generalize to larger models, reducing TTFT by up to 54% while sustaining 37% higher throughput.

cs.AI↗

Disentangling Knowledge States with Ability and Proficiency Modeling for Knowledge Tracing

Knowledge tracing (KT) aims to predict students' future performance by modeling their evolving knowledge states from historical interactions. Existing KT methods usually treat the raw interaction sequence as a unified behavioral process, overlooking the phase-specific nature of learning behaviors. Our preliminary observations show that students are more likely to correctly answer previously failed knowledge concepts after sufficient practice, suggesting a transition from ability-building to proficiency-oriented learning. Motivated by this, we propose Phase-Aware Knowledge Tracing (PAKT), a KT framework that decomposes student interactions into ability and proficiency phases based on the tailored decomposition mechanism. To effectively exploit the decomposed sequences, we design a multi-branch Transformer with a type-aware readout module to jointly capture phase-specific and holistic knowledge states. We further provide a causal analysis to reveal the confounding bias caused by entangling complex learning behaviors in phase-agnostic KT models. Extensive experiments on six public benchmarks demonstrate that our method consistently outperforms representative baselines, with a maximum AUC gain of 1.33% and an average gain of 0.82%.

cs.LG↗

Rotatable Antenna-Empowered Wireless Networks: A Tutorial

Non-fixed flexible antenna architectures, such as fluid antenna system (FAS), movable antenna (MA), and pinching antenna, have garnered significant interest in recent years. Among them, rotatable antenna (RA) has emerged as a promising technology for enhancing wireless communication and sensing performance through flexible antenna orientation/boresight rotation. By enabling mechanical or electronic boresight adjustment without altering physical antenna positions, RA introduces additional spatial degrees of freedom (DoFs) beyond conventional beamforming. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive tutorial on the fundamentals, architectures, and applications of RA-empowered wireless networks. Specifically, we begin by reviewing the historical evolution of RA-related technologies and clarifying the distinctive role of RA among flexible antenna architectures. Then, we establish a unified mathematical framework for RA-enabled systems, including general antenna/array rotation models, as well as channel models that cover near- and far-field propagation characteristics, wideband frequency selectivity, and polarization effects. Building upon this foundation, we investigate antenna/array rotation optimization in representative communication and sensing scenarios. Furthermore, we examine RA channel estimation/acquisition strategies encompassing orientation scheduling mechanisms and signal processing methods that exploit multi-view channel observations. Beyond theoretical modeling and algorithmic design, we discuss practical RA configurations and deployment strategies. We also present recent RA prototypes and experimental results that validate the practical performance gains enabled by antenna rotation. Finally, we highlight promising extensions of RA to emerging wireless paradigms and outline open challenges to inspire future research.

cs.IT↗

Rotating ULA-Enabled Computed Tomography for Efficient 3D Spatial Power Spectrum Synthesis: Architecture and Principled Orientation Design

This paper proposes an efficient three-dimensional (3D) spatial power spectrum synthesis method by rotating a uniform linear array (ULA) about its center in 3D space. Inspired by classical computed tomography (CT), the ULA performs analog receive combining at each rotation angle to produce a partial coherent sum. By collecting such sums over multiple rotations, the full 3D spectrum can be synthesized online via a single radio-frequency (RF) chain, without explicitly acquiring per-antenna signals. Depending on whether the overall coherent sum is accessible, the synthesis is obtained through either a minimum operation over partial spectrum images or joint synthesis after accumulating all coherent sums. Compared with fixed uniform planar array (UPA)-based combining and dense single movable-antenna (MA) sampling for 3D cubic virtual arrays, the proposed scheme achieves full-space 3D coverage with substantially reduced sampling and movement overhead while maintaining uniformly high angular resolution. Its sampling geometry and sequential orientation design also support pipelined analog beamforming, reducing practical hardware cost. To design rotation orientations in a principled manner without prior environmental information, we aim to maximize the expected worst-case projected separation between multi-path component (MPC) pairs. A secondary criterion then minimizes the worst-case projective correlation among orientation axes to reduce orientation redundancy. Accordingly, we optimize orientation sets for different numbers of orientations under isotropic-matrix and unit-norm constraints, using a multistart smooth minimax algorithm. Numerical results show that the optimized orientations uniformly span 3D space and reconstruct full-space 3D spectra close to the dense 3D cubic reference using only a fraction of spatial samples.

eess.SP↗

VINE: Taming Generative Control Policies for Reinforcement Learning

Flow-matching policies have emerged as an effective policy parameterization for robot learning. They iteratively generate actions from noise, enabling highly expressive modeling of complex and multimodal action distributions. However, prior works observed that scaling these policies with value-gradient reinforcement learning (RL) often leads to training instability. Existing methods attribute this instability to iterative generation and therefore avoid end-to-end value-gradient optimization by sacrificing iterative generation, high expressiveness, or value-gradient optimization. Contrary to prior belief, we show the instability does not stem from iterative generation itself, but from the vanilla sampling strategy originally designed for behavior cloning, which becomes brittle under value-gradient RL. Motivated by this insight, we propose VINE, an RL-oriented sampling method that enables stable end-to-end value-gradient optimization for flow-matching policies. Instead of following a single flow trajectory, VINE reconstructs a new interpolation state at every denoising step, creating a stable differentiable path for value-gradient propagation while remaining compatible with the original flow-matching denoising process. As a result, VINE preserves the expressiveness and iterative generation of flow-matching without sacrificing end-to-end value-gradient optimization. Despite performing end-to-end backpropagation through all ten denoising steps, VINE achieves stable policy improvement and consistently outperforms state-of-the-art RL methods on the OGBench offline RL benchmark and real-world robotic manipulation task. Videos are available on our website: https://agibottech.github.io/vine.

cs.RO↗

Proton isovector helicity PDF at NNLO and the twist-3 moment $\tilde{d}_2$ from lattice QCD at physical quark masses

We present a lattice quantum chromodynamics calculation of the $x$-dependent isovector quark helicity parton distribution function (PDF) of the proton in the large momentum effective theory (LaMET) framework. Through operator product expansion (OPE) we also extract the $\tilde{d}_2$ moment of the twist-3 PDF $g_T(x)$ for the first time in the $\overline{\rm MS}$ scheme, which is proportional to the average color Lorentz force experienced by the quark in the proton. This calculation is performed on a lattice of spacing $a$ = 0.076 fm at physical quark masses. The quasi-PDF matrix elements are measured in proton states boosted to momenta $P_z=\{0, 0.25, 1.02, 1.53\}$ GeV. We first extract the lowest few helicity PDF moments from the renormalization-group (RG) invariant ratios of the matrix elements with OPE. Combined with the matrix elements relevant for $g_T(x)$, we obtain $\tilde{d}_2^{u-d}(2\ {\rm GeV})=0.0024(46)$ at next-to-leading order in $\overline{\rm MS}$. Then, the helicity quasi-PDF matrix elements are renormalized in the hybrid scheme with linear renormalon resummation and Fourier transformed to the $x$-space after an asymptotic extrapolation. The quasi-PDF is perturbatively matched to the $\overline{\rm MS}$ PDF with RG and threshold resummations at next-to-leading power and next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracies. After resummations, we determine the PDF in the region $x\in[0.25,0.75]$ with controlled systematic uncertainties. The end-point regions are then parameterized, combined with the LaMET prediction at moderate $x$, and fitted to the short-distance matrix elements in coordinate space.

hep-lat↗

Towards Efficient Large Language Model Serving: A Survey on System-Aware KV Cache Optimization

Despite the rapid advancements of large language models (LLMs), LLM serving systems remain memory-intensive and costly. The key-value (KV) cache, which stores KV tensors during autoregressive decoding, is crucial for enabling low-latency, high-throughput LLM inference serving. In this survey, we focus on system-aware KV infrastructure for serving LLMs (abbreviated as sKis). We revisit recent work from a system behavior perspective, organizing existing efforts into three dimensions: execution and scheduling (temporal), placement and migration (spatial), and representation and retention (structural). Furthermore, we analyze cross-behavior co-design affinity and behavior-objective links, highlighting future opportunities. Our work systematizes a rapidly evolving area, providing a foundation for understanding and innovating KV cache designs in modern LLM serving infrastructure.

cs.LG↗

Bending Beam for THz Wireless Networks: Fundamental, Design Issue, and Prototype

Bending beams, characterized by their non diffracting and self-healing properties in the near field, offer a new approach to bypass blockage in terahertz (THz) wireless communication and sensing. However, the investigations of bend ing beams in the context of wireless communications still remain at an early stage. This article provides a state-of-the-art review of the fundamentals and key application scenarios of bending beams in THz wireless communications and sensing. We first present and compare the existing beamforming design and practical hardware implementation methods for bending beams. Next, we discuss potential applications of bending beams in wireless communica tions and sensing and identify their associated challenges, such as blocked channel modeling, bending beam training, codebook design, etc. Finally, a hardware demonstration of bending beam over THz frequency bands is presented, validating the advantages of bending beam over conventional beamfocusing.

eess.SP↗

GDBR: Label Recovery Attack Against Partial Gradient Encryption in Federated Learning

The increasing demand for data privacy, alongside the benefits of aggregating data from networked devices, has catalyzed the emergence of federated learning (FL). In FL, clients jointly train a global model by sharing gradients computed over private data. While this paradigm eliminates the need to exchange raw data, inference attacks can still be launched to extract sensitive information from gradients. To this end, partial gradient encryption has emerged as a promising design for balancing privacy and efficiency in practical FL systems, as encrypting only the classification-head gradients is believed to prevent known inference attacks while avoiding the high computational cost of encrypting the entire model. However, this design provides a false sense of privacy. By proposing GDBR, we show that sharing even a single unencrypted layer of gradients can lead to serious privacy leakage. GDBR is the first attack capable of high-fidelity label recovery with partial access to the gradients. It exploits a vulnerability in a commonly used neural building block, constructs a gradient bridge from the unencrypted layer to the final output layer, and approximates the logits information for accurate inference of private labels. These inferred labels not only reveal sensitive information about a client's private dataset but also serve as a prerequisite for many downstream attacks, such as data reconstruction and membership inference. GDBR brings these threats squarely into scope for FL systems employing partial encryption. In addition to theoretical analysis, extensive experiments demonstrate the severity of the problem across a wide variety of datasets and model architectures, including convolutional and transformer-based networks. Overall, our findings challenge the widespread assumption that encrypting only the output layer suffices for privacy protection.

cs.LG↗

Elastic Modulus in One-Dimensional Quantum Droplets

Quantum droplets (QDs) are self-bound states of ultradilute quantum fluids stabilized by the interplay between the Lee Huang-Yang (LHY) quantum-fluctuation correction and the mean-field interaction, providing a useful platform for exploring macroscopic quantum phenomena. Recent studies on three-dimensional QDs have introduced the concept of bulk modulus and revealed its connection with the breathing-mode frequency, thereby linking the elastic response of QDs to their collective dynamics. Motivated by this progress, we investigate the elastic modulus of one-dimensional QDs. Based on a super Gaussian variational ansatz, we systematically derive the elastic modulus B and analyze its dependence on the interaction strength and particle number. The analytical predictions are further validated by numerical simulations based on imaginary time evolution and the spatial scaling method. We also establish a quantitative relation between the elastic modulus and the eigenfrequency of the breathing mode. In addition, by incorporating corrections to the droplet width beyond the Thomas Fermi approximation, we obtain the dependence of the ratio η = B/2 on the control parameters g and N. Unlike the three-dimensional case, where the corresponding ratio follows a simple power-law scaling, the one-dimensional system is affected by the soliton-to-droplet crossover, leading to a more intricate dependence of η on g and N. Our results show that, in the high-particle-number regime, the elastic modulus asymptotically approaches a limiting value determined mainly by the interaction strength, whereas in the low-particle-number regime it depends on both the particle number and the interaction strength.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

Correct Asymptotic Wavefunctions for Calculating Photoelectron Angular Distributions of O2- and NO-

The ab initio calculation of photoelectron angular distributions (PADs) for negative ions remains a significant theoretical challenge. In this work, we report a joint experimental and theoretical investigation of PADs for a series of molecular anions with varying polarities, including the nonpolar O2-, the weakly polar NO-, and the strongly polar AsO- and SbO-. To accurately describe the long-range electronic wavefunctions -- where photodetachment contributes most strongly -- we modified the standard Gaussian-type orbitals (GTOs) by augmenting them with a correct exponential Slater-tail basis set (~e^(-ξr)). This simple yet effective approach significantly improves the agreement between the experimental and theoretical PADs for O2- and NO-. However, notable discrepancies persist for NO- for transitions to the v = 0 and v = 1 vibrational levels of neutral NO even after this correction. Given that our methodology successfully reproduced PADs for strongly polar anions (e.g., AsO- and SbO-), these residual discrepancies are unlikely to stem from "exit-channel scattering" induced by long-range dipole fields. Instead, we tentatively attribute the failure for NO- to the breakdown of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation or the frozen orbital approximation, arising from the extremely weak binding of the excess electron.

physics.atom-ph↗

Toward Efficient Sensing in Multi-Device ISCC by Removing Frequency Domain Redundancy

Integrated sensing, communication, and computation (ISCC) is envisioned as a key enabler for intelligent services in future wireless networks. However, in multi-device ISCC systems, directly offloading full orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) sensing data to the edge may incur excessive overhead, thereby limiting sensing performance under practical resource constraints. In this paper, we propose a subcarrier selection-based sensing framework for multi-device ISCC systems, where frequency-domain redundancy in OFDM sensing data is removed during local preprocessing to reduce sensing data transmission and processing overhead. Based on the proposed framework, we establish analytical models for sensing accuracy, delay, and energy consumption, and formulate a sensing accuracy maximization problem under practical resource constraints. To solve this problem, we develop an alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM)-based algorithm. Experiments on commodity wireless devices validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework and show that it consistently outperforms three baseline schemes under various resource constraints.

eess.SP↗

A second-order unified gas-kinetic wave-particle method with enhanced mesh independence for hypersonic flows

Benefiting from the direct modeling of physical laws in a discretized space and the automatic decomposition of the gas distribution function into hydrodynamic waves and particles, the UGKWP method offers significant advantages for multiscale flows such as hypersonic flows, plasma transport, and radiation transport. In this study, the particle sampling accuracy in the UGKWP method is improved from first order to second order, so that the second-order spatial and temporal accuracy is preserved across the full scheme. Specifically, the modifications include second-order particle sampling based on local macroscopic gradients, a weighted least-squares gradient reconstruction that incorporates wall values, a revised Venkatakrishnan limiter for highly stretched cells, and conservation corrections after particle sampling. Moreover, the first-order Chapman--Enskog term is considered in the free-transport part of the hydrodynamic wave flux, enabling better recovery of the GKS in the near-continuum regime. Based on these improvements, the mesh-independence behavior of the UGKWP method is notably enhanced, which is more consistent with the performance of the UGKS, validated by a detailed hypersonic cylinder flow test case. Furthermore, systematic comparisons with the single-scale DSMC method are performed for two-dimensional hypersonic flow over a cylinder and three-dimensional flow over a blunt cone. Wall pressure, shear stress, and heat flux coefficients (CP, CF, and CQ) are examined in the cylinder case, while the overall aerodynamic coefficients (CL, CD, and L/D) are assessed in the cone case. The multiscale UGKWP method exhibits significantly better mesh-independence performance than DSMC for mesh-sensitive quantities such as CF, CQ, CD, and L/D, which are critical for aerodynamic and thermal protection design of near-space hypersonic vehicles.

physics.flu-dyn↗

Beyond Uniform Experts: Cost-Aware Expert Execution for Efficient Multi-Device MoE Inference

Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architectures enable language models to achieve unprecedented scale via sparse activation. However, their inference performance is often limited by data movement bottlenecks. Two coupled challenges exacerbate this limtation: (1) Importance-Agnostic Cost: Low-contribution experts incur nearly uniform memory and transfer costs, resulting in a low cost-to-benefit ratio and wasting critical bandwidth; (2) System-Level Imbalance: Multi-device deployments are universally bottlenecked by the slowest device, meaning that local reductions on one device may yield no improvement in end-to-end latency. We propose Cost-Aware Expert Execution (CAEE), a hardware-guided runtime framework that jointly optimizes for token-level expert importance and system-level execution cost. CAEE uses lightweight, calibrated cost models to estimate hardware overhead, selectively prunes low-importance, high-cost experts, and redistributes their contributions via a low-overhead compensation mechanism, avoiding extra data movement. Evaluations on the 671B DeepSeek-R1 model show that CAEE can reduce end-to-end inference latency by 8\%-18\% across diverse deployment settings, including expert offloading and on-device execution on multi-device systems, while maintaining a model accuracy drop of less than 1\%.

cs.DC↗

Spin-orbit coupling induced geometric squeezing in rotating Bose-Einstein condensates

Squeezed states play a key role in diverse frontiers of quantum physics. Geometrically squeezed states, a squeezed state in the orbital phase space of rotating Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC), have been conventionally generated by anisotropic trapping potentials. In this work, we propose a different route to generate geometric squeezing via spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in a pseudospin-1/2 BEC. We show that the SOC enables effective two-phonon transitions within the lowest Landau level via virtual spin-flip processes, leading to exponential squeezing dynamics in both spin components. Furthermore, by applying a $π/2$ spin rotation, the two spin channels can be coherently coupled to produce two-mode geometric squeezing. We also investigate the influence of interatomic interactions on squeezing performance and identify parameters where robust squeezing can be achieved. Our work provides a viable pathway to realize and manipulate geometric squeezing in spinor quantum gases.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

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↗

Diffusion asymmetry of repulsive skyrmions in structured environment

The diffusion of matter in structured environments can give rise to emergent phenomena that do not occur in unstructured environments. Here, we report the asymmetric diffusion of magnetic skyrmions in structured chambers, where repulsive skyrmion-skyrmion and skyrmion-environment interactions play vital roles in their diffusive behavior. By fabricating an off-center asymmetric gate separating two chambers, skyrmions could demonstrate asymmetric diffusion through the gate, which depends on the gate symmetry, the gate opening width, and the skyrmion density. Although the diffusion is affected by the skyrmion density, the simulation outcomes are generally in line with rate equation solutions assuming time-independent diffusion rates. Diffusive skyrmions within the chamber can transiently form bonds through repulsive skyrmion-skyrmion interactions, leading to emergent rotational dynamics that is unique to interacting skyrmion systems. Our results uncover asymmetric diffusive behavior of skyrmions, offering insights that will appeal to the wide audience interested in magnetism, active matter, and statistical physics.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

ISAC for Sea-Air Networks: Predictive Beam Tracking under Sea Induced Disturbances

In sea-air communication networks composed of an uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) and an uncrewed surface vehicle (USV), the extended target characteristics and three degree of freedom motion of the USV under sea induced disturbances cause beam misalignment in the UAV's tracking of the USV. To address these issues, this paper proposes a predictive beam tracking scheme based on integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) for sea-air networks. We develop a wide and narrow beam switching scheme based on sub-array selection, where a time allocation factor is optimized to balance robust state sensing in the wide beam mode and high-rate communication in the narrow beam mode. Specifically, a wide beam mode provides full USV coverage and state sensing, while a narrow beam mode exploits the estimated state for high-gain communication with the communication receiver (CR) mounted on the USV. To characterize the CR motion, a sea-air state evolution model is derived by jointly considering the surge, sway, yaw, and sea induced disturbances of the USV. For the extended target USV, the measurement equation is constructed from multiple scatterer observations, with the measurement noise caused by sea clutter modeled, and an extended Kalman filter (EKF) based CR state prediction and estimation method is developed. In addition, the effect of sea clutter on sensing accuracy is incorporated into the time allocation optimization problem to adjust the time of the wide beam mode. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme achieves higher tracking accuracy than the state-of-the-art benchmark schemes.

eess.SY↗