arXiv subjects

Xi Chen

Publications and source records attributed to Xi Chen.

At least 1,243 records · Page 69Linked to original sources

arXiv2015

Detection of a superconducting phase in a two-atom layer of hexagonal Ga film grown on semiconducting GaN(0001)

The recent observation of superconducting state at atomic scale has motivated the pursuit of exotic condensed phases in two-dimensional (2D) systems. Here we report on a superconducting phase in two-monolayer crystalline Ga films epitaxially grown on wide band-gap semiconductor GaN(0001). This phase exhibits a hexagonal structure and only 0.552 nm in thickness, nevertheless, brings about a superconducting transition temperature Tc as high as 5.4 K, confirmed by in situ scanning tunneling spectroscopy, and ex situ electrical magneto-transport and magnetization measurements. The anisotropy of critical magnetic field and Berezinski-Kosterlitz-Thouless-like transition are observed, typical for the 2D superconductivity. Our results demonstrate a novel platform for exploring atomic-scale 2D superconductor, with great potential for understanding of the interface superconductivity.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2014

New algorithms and lower bounds for monotonicity testing

We consider the problem of testing whether an unknown Boolean function $f$ is monotone versus $ε$-far from every monotone function. The two main results of this paper are a new lower bound and a new algorithm for this well-studied problem. Lower bound: We prove an $\tildeΩ(n^{1/5})$ lower bound on the query complexity of any non-adaptive two-sided error algorithm for testing whether an unknown Boolean function $f$ is monotone versus constant-far from monotone. This gives an exponential improvement on the previous lower bound of $Ω(\log n)$ due to Fischer et al. [FLN+02]. We show that the same lower bound holds for monotonicity testing of Boolean-valued functions over hypergrid domains $\{1,\ldots,m\}^n$ for all $m\ge 2$. Upper bound: We give an $\tilde{O}(n^{5/6})\text{poly}(1/ε)$-query algorithm that tests whether an unknown Boolean function $f$ is monotone versus $ε$-far from monotone. Our algorithm, which is non-adaptive and makes one-sided error, is a modified version of the algorithm of Chakrabarty and Seshadhri [CS13a], which makes $\tilde{O}(n^{7/8})\text{poly}(1/ε)$ queries.

cs.CC↗

arXiv2014

Boolean function monotonicity testing requires (almost) $n^{1/2}$ non-adaptive queries

We prove a lower bound of $Ω(n^{1/2 - c})$, for all $c>0$, on the query complexity of (two-sided error) non-adaptive algorithms for testing whether an $n$-variable Boolean function is monotone versus constant-far from monotone. This improves a $\tildeΩ(n^{1/5})$ lower bound for the same problem that was recently given in [CST14] and is very close to $Ω(n^{1/2})$, which we conjecture is the optimal lower bound for this model.

cs.CC↗

arXiv2014

On the Complexity of Nash Equilibria in Anonymous Games

We show that the problem of finding an ε-approximate Nash equilibrium in an anonymous game with seven pure strategies is complete in PPAD, when the approximation parameter ε is exponentially small in the number of players.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2014

Ultrafast dynamics and fragmentation of C60 in intense laser pulses

The radiation-induced fragmentation of the C60 fullerene was investigated by the tight-binding electron-ion dynamics simulations. In intense laser field, the breathing vibrational mode is much more strongly excited than the pentagonal-pinch mode. The fragmentation effect was found more remarkable at long wavelength lambda>800 nm rather than the resonant wavelengths due to the internal laser-induced dipole force, and the production ratio of C and C2 rapidly grows with increasing wavelength. By such fragmentation law, C atoms, C2 dimers or large Cn fragments could be selectively obtained by changing the laser wavelength. And the fragmentation of C60 by two laser pulses like the multi-step atomic photoionization was investigated.

physics.atm-clus↗

arXiv2014

Moire superlattice effects in graphene/boron-nitride van der Waals heterostructures

Van der Waals heterostructures of graphene and hexagonal boron nitride feature a moiré superlattice for graphene's Dirac electrons. Here, we review the effects generated by this superlattice, including a specific miniband structure featuring gaps and secondary Dirac points, and a fractal spectrum of magnetic minibands known as Hofstadter's butterfly.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2014

Spectral Methods meet EM: A Provably Optimal Algorithm for Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is a popular paradigm for effectively collecting labels at low cost. The Dawid-Skene estimator has been widely used for inferring the true labels from the noisy labels provided by non-expert crowdsourcing workers. However, since the estimator maximizes a non-convex log-likelihood function, it is hard to theoretically justify its performance. In this paper, we propose a two-stage efficient algorithm for multi-class crowd labeling problems. The first stage uses the spectral method to obtain an initial estimate of parameters. Then the second stage refines the estimation by optimizing the objective function of the Dawid-Skene estimator via the EM algorithm. We show that our algorithm achieves the optimal convergence rate up to a logarithmic factor. We conduct extensive experiments on synthetic and real datasets. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is comparable to the most accurate empirical approach, while outperforming several other recently proposed methods.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2014

Chemical potential dependent gap-opening at the Dirac surface states of Bi2Se3 induced by aggregated substitutional Cr atoms

With angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, gap-opening is resolved at up to room temperature in the Dirac surface states of molecular beam epitaxy grown Cr-doped Bi2Se3 topological insulator films, which however show no long-range ferromagnetic order down to 1.5 K. The gap size is found decreasing with increasing electron doping level. Scanning tunneling microscopy and first principles calculations demonstrate that substitutional Cr atoms aggregate into superparamagnetic multimers in Bi2Se3 matrix, which contribute to the observed chemical potential dependent gap-opening in the Dirac surface states without long-range ferromagnetic order.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2014

Early-stage star forming cloud cores in GLIMPSE Extended Green Objects (EGOs) as traced by organic species

In order to investigate the physical and chemical properties of massive star forming cores in early stages, we analyse the excitation and abundance of four organic species, CH3OH, CH3OCH3, HCOOCH3 and CH3CH2CN, toward 29 Extended Green Object (EGO) cloud cores that were observed by our previous single dish spectral line survey. The EGO cloud cores are found to have similar methanol J_3-J_2 rotation temperatures of ~44 K, a typical linear size of ~0.036 pc, and a typical beam averaged methanol abundance of several 10^(-9) (the beam corrected value could reach several 10^(-7)). The abundances of the latter three species, normalized by that of methanol, are found to be correlated also across a large variety of clouds such as EGO cloud cores, hot corinos, massive hot cores and Galactic Center clouds. The chemical properties of the EGO cloud cores lie between that of hot cores and hot corinos. However, the abundances and abundance ratios of the four species can not be satisfactorily explained by recent chemical models either among the EGO cloud cores or among the various types of cloud cores from literature.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2014

Power-law scaling of asymmetries in viscous flow with PT-symmetric inflow and outflow

In recent years, open systems with balanced loss and gain, that are invariant under the combined parity and time-reversal ($\mathcal{PT}$) operations, have been studied via asymmetries of their solutions. They represent systems as diverse as coupled optical waveguides and electrical or mechanical oscillators. We numerically investigate the asymmetries of incompressible viscous flow in two and three dimensions with "balanced" inflow-outflow ($\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric) configurations. By introducing configuration-dependent classes of asymmetry functions in velocity, kinetic energy density, and vorticity fields, we find that the flow asymmetries exhibit power-law scaling with a single exponent in the laminar regime with the Reynolds number ranging over four decades. We show that such single-exponent scaling is expected for small Reynolds numbers, although its robustness at large values of Reynolds numbers is unexpected. Our results imply that $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric inflow-outflow configurations provide a hitherto unexplored avenue to tune flow properties.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2014

Electrically tuned magnetic order and magnetoresistance in a topological insulator

The Dirac-like surface states of the topological insulators (TIs) are protected by time reversal symmetry (TRS) and exhibit a host of novel properties. Introducing magnetism into TI, which breaks the TRS, is expected to create exotic topological magnetoelectric effects. A particularly intriguing phenomenon in this case is the magnetic field dependence of electrical resistance, or magnetoresistance (MR). The intricate interplay between topological protection and broken-TRS may lead to highly unconventional MR behaviour that can find unique applications in magnetic sensing and data storage. However, so far the MR of TI with spontaneously broken TRS is still poorly understood, mainly due to the lack of well-controlled experiments. In this work, we investigate the magneto transport properties of a ferromagnetic TI thin film fabricated into a field effect transistor device. We observe an unusually complex evolution of MR when the Fermi level (EF) is tuned across the Dirac point (DP) by gate voltage. In particular, MR tends to be positive when EF lies close to the DP but becomes negative at higher energies. This trend is opposite to that expected from the Berry phase picture for localization, but is intimately correlated with the gate-tuned magnetic order. We show that the underlying physics is the competition between the topology-induced weak antilocalization and magnetism-induced negative MR. The simultaneous electrical control of magnetic order and magneto transport facilitates future TI-based spintronic devices.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2014

Classifying and Visualizing Motion Capture Sequences using Deep Neural Networks

The gesture recognition using motion capture data and depth sensors has recently drawn more attention in vision recognition. Currently most systems only classify dataset with a couple of dozens different actions. Moreover, feature extraction from the data is often computational complex. In this paper, we propose a novel system to recognize the actions from skeleton data with simple, but effective, features using deep neural networks. Features are extracted for each frame based on the relative positions of joints (PO), temporal differences (TD), and normalized trajectories of motion (NT). Given these features a hybrid multi-layer perceptron is trained, which simultaneously classifies and reconstructs input data. We use deep autoencoder to visualize learnt features, and the experiments show that deep neural networks can capture more discriminative information than, for instance, principal component analysis can. We test our system on a public database with 65 classes and more than 2,000 motion sequences. We obtain an accuracy above 95% which is, to our knowledge, the state of the art result for such a large dataset.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2014

Charge-Stripe Order in a Parent Compound of Iron-based Superconductors

Charge ordering is one of the most intriguing and extensively studied phenomena in correlated electronic materials because of its strong impact on electron transport properties including superconductivity. Despite its ubiquitousness in correlated systems, the occurrence of charge ordering in iron-based superconductors is still unresolved. Here we use scanning tunneling microscopy to reveal a long-range charge-stripe order and a highly anisotropic dispersion of electronic states in the ground state of stoichiometric FeTe, the parent compound of the Fe(Te, Se, S) superconductor family. The formation of charge order in a strongly correlated electron system with integer nominal valence (here Fe$^{2+}$) is unexpected and suggests that the iron-based superconductors may exhibit more complex charge dynamics than originally expected. We show that the present observations can be attributed to the surpassing of the role of local Coulomb interaction by the poorly screened longer-range Coulomb interactions, facilitated by large Hund's rule coupling.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2014

Detection of 36 GHz class I methanol maser emission towards NGCS253

We have used the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) to search for emission from the $4_{-1} \rightarrow 3_{0}E$ transition of methanol (36.2 GHz) towards the center of the nearby starburst galaxy NGC253. Two regions of emission were detected, offset from the nucleus along the same position angle as the inner spiral arms. The emission is largely unresolved on a scale of 5 arcsec, has a full-width half maximum (FWHM) line width of < 30 km s$^{-1}$, and an isotropic luminosity orders of magnitude larger than that observed in any Galactic star formation regions. These characteristics suggest that the 36.2 GHz methanol emission is most likely a maser, although observations with higher angular and spectral resolution are required to confirm this. If it is a maser this represents the first detection of a class I methanol maser outside the Milky Way. The 36.2 GHz methanol emission in NGC253 has more than an order of magnitude higher isotropic luminosity than the widespread emission recently detected towards the center of the Milky Way. If emission from this transition scales with nuclear star formation rate then it may be detectable in the central regions of many starburst galaxies. Detection of methanol emission in ultra-luminous infra-red galaxies (ULIRGs) would open up a new tool for testing for variations in fundamental constants (in particular the proton-to-electron mass ratio) on cosmological scales.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2014

The complexity of approximating conservative counting CSPs

We study the complexity of approximately solving the weighted counting constraint satisfaction problem #CSP(F). In the conservative case, where F contains all unary functions, there is a classification known for the case in which the domain of functions in F is Boolean. In this paper, we give a classification for the more general problem where functions in F have an arbitrary finite domain. We define the notions of weak log-modularity and weak log-supermodularity. We show that if F is weakly log-modular, then #CSP(F)is in FP. Otherwise, it is at least as difficult to approximate as #BIS, the problem of counting independent sets in bipartite graphs. #BIS is complete with respect to approximation-preserving reductions for a logically-defined complexity class #RHPi1, and is believed to be intractable. We further sub-divide the #BIS-hard case. If F is weakly log-supermodular, then we show that #CSP(F) is as easy as a (Boolean) log-supermodular weighted #CSP. Otherwise, we show that it is NP-hard to approximate. Finally, we give a full trichotomy for the arity-2 case, where #CSP(F) is in FP, or is #BIS-equivalent, or is equivalent in difficulty to #SAT, the problem of approximately counting the satisfying assignments of a Boolean formula in conjunctive normal form. We also discuss the algorithmic aspects of our classification.

cs.CC↗

arXiv2014

Exciton Binding Energy of Monolayer WS2

The optical properties of monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDC) feature prominent excitonic natures. Here we report an experimental approach toward measuring the exciton binding energy of monolayer WS2 with linear differential transmission spectroscopy and two-photon photoluminescence excitation spectroscopy (TP-PLE). TP-PLE measurements show the exciton binding energy of 0.71eV around K valley in the Brillouin zone. The trion binding energy of 34meV, two-photon absorption cross section 4X10^{4}cm^{2}W^{-2}S^{-1} at 780nm and exciton-exciton annihilation rate around 0.5cm^{2}/s are experimentally obtained.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2014

Exclusive quantum channels in quantum networks

Quantum state can be teleported to a remote site by only local measurement and classical communication if the prior Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen quantum channel is available between the sender and the receiver. Those quantum channels shared by multiple nodes can constitute a quantum network. Yet, studies on the efficiency of quantum communication between nodes of quantum networks remain limited, which differs from classical case in that the quantum channel will be consumed if teleportation is performed. Here, we introduce the exclusive quantum channels (EQC) as the measure of efficiency of quantum information transmission. It quantifies the amount of quantum information which can be teleported between nodes in a quantum network. We show that different types of EQC are local quantities with effective circles. Significantly, capacity of quantum communication of quantum networks quantified by EQC is independent of distance for the communicating nodes. Thus, the quantum network can be dealt as the isotropic medium where quantum communication is no-decaying. EQC are studied by both analytical and numerical methods. The EQC can be enhanced by transformations of lattices of quantum network via entanglement swapping. Our result opens the avenue in studying the quantum communication of the quantum networks.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2014

A Scale-Free Topology Construction Model for Wireless Sensor Networks

A local-area and energy-efficient (LAEE) evolution model for wireless sensor networks is proposed. The process of topology evolution is divided into two phases. In the first phase, nodes are distributed randomly in a fixed region. In the second phase, according to the spatial structure of wireless sensor networks, topology evolution starts from the sink, grows with an energy-efficient preferential attachment rule in the new node's local-area, and stops until all nodes are connected into network. Both analysis and simulation results show that the degree distribution of LAEE follows the power law. This topology construction model has better tolerance against energy depletion or random failure than other non-scale-free WSN topologies.

cs.NI↗