5,512 research outputs found
Cosmological Parameter Determination in Free-Form Strong Gravitational Lens Modeling
We develop a novel statistical strong lensing approach to probe the
cosmological parameters by exploiting multiple redshift image systems behind
galaxies or galaxy clusters. The method relies on free-form mass inversion of
strong lenses and does not need any additional information other than
gravitational lensing. Since in free-form lensing the solution space is a
high-dimensional convex polytope, we consider Bayesian model comparison
analysis to infer the cosmological parameters. The volume of the solution space
is taken as a tracer of the probability of the underlying cosmological
assumption. In contrast to parametric mass inversions, our method accounts for
the mass-sheet degeneracy, which implies a degeneracy between the steepness of
the profile and the cosmological parameters. Parametric models typically break
this degeneracy, introducing hidden priors to the analysis that contaminate the
inference of the parameters. We test our method with synthetic lenses, showing
that it is able to infer the assumed cosmological parameters. Applied to the
CLASH clusters, the method might be competitive with other probes.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA
Robust Stability Analysis of Nonlinear Hybrid Systems
We present a methodology for robust stability analysis of nonlinear hybrid systems, through the algorithmic construction of polynomial and piecewise polynomial Lyapunov-like functions using convex optimization and in particular the sum of squares decomposition of multivariate polynomials. Several improvements compared to previous approaches are discussed, such as treating in a unified way polynomial switching surfaces and robust stability analysis for nonlinear hybrid systems
A case study in model-driven synthetic biology
We report on a case study in synthetic biology, demonstrating the modeldriven
design of a self-powering electrochemical biosensor. An essential result of
the design process is a general template of a biosensor, which can be instantiated
to be adapted to specific pollutants. This template represents a gene expression network
extended by metabolic activity. We illustrate the model-based analysis of this
template using qualitative, stochastic and continuous Petri nets and related analysis
techniques, contributing to a reliable and robust design
Dynamical inference from a kinematic snapshot: The force law in the Solar System
If a dynamical system is long-lived and non-resonant (that is, if there is a
set of tracers that have evolved independently through many orbital times), and
if the system is observed at any non-special time, it is possible to infer the
dynamical properties of the system (such as the gravitational force or
acceleration law) from a snapshot of the positions and velocities of the tracer
population at a single moment in time. In this paper we describe a general
inference technique that solves this problem while allowing (1) the unknown
distribution function of the tracer population to be simultaneously inferred
and marginalized over, and (2) prior information about the gravitational field
and distribution function to be taken into account. As an example, we consider
the simplest problem of this kind: We infer the force law in the Solar System
using only an instantaneous kinematic snapshot (valid at 2009 April 1.0) for
the eight major planets. We consider purely radial acceleration laws of the
form a_r = -A [r/r_0]^{-\alpha}, where r is the distance from the Sun. Using a
probabilistic inference technique, we infer 1.989 < \alpha < 2.052 (95 percent
interval), largely independent of any assumptions about the distribution of
energies and eccentricities in the system beyond the assumption that the system
is phase-mixed. Generalizations of the methods used here will permit, among
other things, inference of Milky Way dynamics from Gaia-like observations
A Benchmarks Library for Extended Parametric Timed Automata
Parametric timed automata are a powerful formalism for reasoning on
concurrent real-time systems with unknown or uncertain timing constants. In
order to test the efficiency of new algorithms, a fair set of benchmarks is
required. We present an extension of the IMITATOR benchmarks library, that
accumulated over the years a number of case studies from academic and
industrial contexts. We extend here the library with several dozens of new
benchmarks; these benchmarks highlight several new features: liveness
properties, extensions of (parametric) timed automata (including stopwatches or
multi-rate clocks), and unsolvable toy benchmarks. These latter additions help
to emphasize the limits of state-of-the-art parameter synthesis techniques,
with the hope to develop new dedicated algorithms in the future.Comment: This is the author (and extended) version of the manuscript of the
same name published in the proceedings of the 15th International Conference
on Tests and Proofs (TAP 2021
- …