43,509 research outputs found
The accessibility dimension for structured document retrieval
Structured document retrieval aims at retrieving the document components that best satisfy a query, instead of merely retrieving pre-defined document units. This paper reports on an investigation of a tf-idf-acc approach, where tf and idf are the classical term frequency and inverse document frequency, and acc, a new parameter called accessibility, that captures the structure of documents. The tf-idf-acc approach is defined using a probabilistic relational algebra. To investigate the retrieval quality and estimate the acc values, we developed a method that automatically constructs diverse test collections of structured documents from a standard test collection, with which experiments were carried out. The analysis of the experiments provides estimates of the acc values
Quantum Groups, Coherent States, Squeezing and Lattice Quantum Mechanics
By resorting to the Fock--Bargmann representation, we incorporate the quantum
Weyl--Heisenberg (-WH) algebra into the theory of entire analytic functions.
The main tool is the realization of the --WH algebra in terms of finite
difference operators. The physical relevance of our study relies on the fact
that coherent states (CS) are indeed formulated in the space of entire analytic
functions where they can be rigorously expressed in terms of theta functions on
the von Neumann lattice. The r\^ole played by the finite difference operators
and the relevance of the lattice structure in the completeness of the CS system
suggest that the --deformation of the WH algebra is an essential tool in the
physics of discretized (periodic) systems. In this latter context we define a
quantum mechanics formalism for lattice systems.Comment: 22 pages, TEX file, DFF188/9/93 Firenz
Is there a physically universal cellular automaton or Hamiltonian?
It is known that both quantum and classical cellular automata (CA) exist that
are computationally universal in the sense that they can simulate, after
appropriate initialization, any quantum or classical computation, respectively.
Here we introduce a different notion of universality: a CA is called physically
universal if every transformation on any finite region can be (approximately)
implemented by the autonomous time evolution of the system after the complement
of the region has been initialized in an appropriate way. We pose the question
of whether physically universal CAs exist. Such CAs would provide a model of
the world where the boundary between a physical system and its controller can
be consistently shifted, in analogy to the Heisenberg cut for the quantum
measurement problem. We propose to study the thermodynamic cost of computation
and control within such a model because implementing a cyclic process on a
microsystem may require a non-cyclic process for its controller, whereas
implementing a cyclic process on system and controller may require the
implementation of a non-cyclic process on a "meta"-controller, and so on.
Physically universal CAs avoid this infinite hierarchy of controllers and the
cost of implementing cycles on a subsystem can be described by mixing
properties of the CA dynamics. We define a physical prior on the CA
configurations by applying the dynamics to an initial state where half of the
CA is in the maximum entropy state and half of it is in the all-zero state
(thus reflecting the fact that life requires non-equilibrium states like the
boundary between a hold and a cold reservoir). As opposed to Solomonoff's
prior, our prior does not only account for the Kolmogorov complexity but also
for the cost of isolating the system during the state preparation if the
preparation process is not robust.Comment: 27 pages, 1 figur
Hadamard states from null infinity
Free field theories on a four dimensional, globally hyperbolic spacetime,
whose dynamics is ruled by a Green hyperbolic partial differential operator,
can be quantized following the algebraic approach. It consists of a two-step
procedure: In the first part one identifies the observables of the underlying
physical system collecting them in a *-algebra which encodes their relational
and structural properties. In the second step one must identify a quantum
state, that is a positive, normalized linear functional on the *-algebra out of
which one recovers the interpretation proper of quantum mechanical theories via
the so-called Gelfand-Naimark-Segal theorem. In between the plethora of
possible states, only few of them are considered physically acceptable and they
are all characterized by the so-called Hadamard condition, a constraint on the
singular structure of the associated two-point function. Goal of this paper is
to outline a construction scheme for these states which can be applied whenever
the underlying background possesses a null (conformal) boundary. We discuss in
particular the examples of a real, massless conformally coupled scalar field
and of linearized gravity on a globally hyperbolic and asymptotically flat
spacetime.Comment: 23 pages, submitted to the Proceedings of the conference "Quantum
Mathematical Physics", held in Regensburg from the 29th of September to the
02nd of October 201
Factory of realities: on the emergence of virtual spatiotemporal structures
The ubiquitous nature of modern Information Retrieval and Virtual World give
rise to new realities. To what extent are these "realities" real? Which
"physics" should be applied to quantitatively describe them? In this essay I
dwell on few examples. The first is Adaptive neural networks, which are not
networks and not neural, but still provide service similar to classical ANNs in
extended fashion. The second is the emergence of objects looking like
Einsteinian spacetime, which describe the behavior of an Internet surfer like
geodesic motion. The third is the demonstration of nonclassical and even
stronger-than-quantum probabilities in Information Retrieval, their use.
Immense operable datasets provide new operationalistic environments, which
become to greater and greater extent "realities". In this essay, I consider the
overall Information Retrieval process as an objective physical process,
representing it according to Melucci metaphor in terms of physical-like
experiments. Various semantic environments are treated as analogs of various
realities. The readers' attention is drawn to topos approach to physical
theories, which provides a natural conceptual and technical framework to cope
with the new emerging realities.Comment: 21 p
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