Enhancing Perceptual Attributes with Bayesian Style Generation

Deep learning has brought an unprecedented progress in computer vision and significant advances have been made in predicting subjective properties inherent to visual data (e.g., memorability, aesthetic quality, evoked emotions, etc.). Recently, some research works have even proposed deep learning approaches to modify images such as to appropriately alter these properties. Following this research line, this paper introduces a novel deep learning framework for synthesizing images in order to enhance a predefined perceptual attribute. Our approach takes as input a natural image and exploits recent models for deep style transfer and generative adversarial networks to change its style in order to modify a specific high-level attribute. Differently from previous works focusing on enhancing a specific property of a visual content, we propose a general framework and demonstrate its effectiveness in two use cases, i.e. increasing image memorability and generating scary pictures. We evaluate the proposed approach on publicly available benchmarks, demonstrating its advantages over state of the art methods.Comment: ACCV-201

Magnetic Component of Quark-Gluon Plasma is also a Liquid!

The so called magnetic scenario recently suggested in \cite{Liao_ES_mono} emphasizes the role of monopoles in strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma (sQGP) near/above the deconfinement temperature, and specifically predicts that they help reduce its viscosity by the so called "magnetic bottle" effect. Arguments for "magnetic liquid" in 1-2$T_c$ based on lattice measurement of monopole density were provided in \cite{Chernodub}. Here we present results for monopole-(anti)monopole correlation functions from the same classical molecular dynamics simulations, which are found to be in very good agreement with recent lattice results \cite{D'Alessandro:2007su}. We show that the magnetic Coulomb coupling does run in the direction $opposite$ to the electric one, as expected, and it is roughly inverse of the asymptotic freedom formula for the electric one. However, as $T$ decreases to $T_c$, the magnetic coupling never gets weak, with the plasma parameter always large enough ($\Gamma>1$). This nicely agrees with empirical evidences from RHIC experiments, implying that magnetic objects cannot have large mean free path and should also form a good liquid with low viscosity.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. All figs updated. Important changes and new results included in v

Strongly coupled plasma with electric and magnetic charges

A number of theoretical and lattice results lead us to believe that Quark-Gluon Plasma not too far from $T_c$ contains not only electrically charged quasiparticles -- quarks and gluons -- but magnetically charged ones -- monopoles and dyons -- as well. Although binary systems like charge-monopole and charge-dyon were considered in details before in both classical and quantum settings, it is the first study of coexisting electric and magnetic particles in many-body context. We perform Molecular Dynamics study of strongly coupled plasmas with $\sim 1000$ particles and different fraction of magnetic charges. Correlation functions and Kubo formulae lead to such transport properties as diffusion constant, shear viscosity and electric conductivity: we compare the first two with empirical data from RHIC experiments as well as results from AdS/CFT correspondence. We also study a number of collective excitations in these systems.Comment: 2nd version, 22 pages, 32 figures: two important new figures have been included to compare our results with RHIC experiments and AdS/CFT results; a few new references and comments are added as wel

Avalanche-Induced Current Enhancement in Semiconducting Carbon Nanotubes

Semiconducting carbon nanotubes under high electric field stress (~10 V/um) display a striking, exponential current increase due to avalanche generation of free electrons and holes. Unlike in other materials, the avalanche process in such 1D quantum wires involves access to the third sub-band, is insensitive to temperature, but strongly dependent on diameter ~exp(-1/d^2). Comparison with a theoretical model yields a novel approach to obtain the inelastic optical phonon emission length, L_OP,ems ~ 15d nm. The combined results underscore the importance of multi-band transport in 1D molecular wires

Renormalization Group Approach to Field Theory at Finite Temperature

Scalar field theory at finite temperature is investigated via an improved renormalization group prescription which provides an effective resummation over all possible non-overlapping higher loop graphs. Explicit analyses for the lambda phi^4 theory are performed in d=4 Euclidean space for both low and high temperature limits. We generate a set of coupled equations for the mass parameter and the coupling constant from the renormalization group flow equation. Dimensional reduction and symmetry restoration are also explored with our improved approach.Comment: 29 pages, can include figures in the body of the text using epsf.st

Radiative and flavor-violating transitions of leptons from interactions with color-octet particles

It has been recently proposed that neutrino mass could originate from Yukawa interactions of leptons with new colored particles. This raises the interesting possibility of testing mass generation through copious production of those particles at hadron colliders. A realistic assessment of it however should take into account how large those interactions could be from available precision results. In this work we make a systematic analysis to the flavor structure in Yukawa couplings, provide a convenient parametrization to it, and investigate the rare radiative and pure leptonic decays of the muon and tau leptons. For general values of parameters the muon decays set stringent constraints on the couplings, and all rare tau decays are far below the current experimental sensitivity. However, there is room in parameter space in which the muon decays could be significantly suppressed by destructive interference between colored particles without generically reducing the couplings themselves. This is also the region of parameters that is relevant to collider physics. We show that for this part of parameter space some tau decays can reach or are close to the current level of precision.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figure

Flow Equations for U_k and Z_k

By considering the gradient expansion for the wilsonian effective action S_k of a single component scalar field theory truncated to the first two terms, the potential U_k and the kinetic term Z_k, I show that the recent claim that different expansion of the fluctuation determinant give rise to different renormalization group equations for Z_k is incorrect. The correct procedure to derive this equation is presented and the set of coupled differential equations for U_k and Z_k is definitely established.Comment: 5 page

Effect of Light Fermions on the Confinement Transition in QCD-like Theories

Dependence of the confinement transition parameters on the fermion content provides information on the mechanism of confinement. Recent progress in lattice gauge theories has allowed to study it for light flavor number $N_f\sim O(10)$ and found this transition to shift toward significantly stronger coupling. We propose an explanation for that: light fermions can occupy the chromo-magnetic monopoles, via zero modes, making them "distinguishable" and unsuitable for Bose-Einstein Condensation. Such dilution of unoccuplied monopoles is compensated by stronger coupling that makes them lighter and more numerous. We also suggest that flavor-carrying quark-monopole objects account for the density beyond quark Fermi sphere seen in cold dense phase of $N_c=2$ lattice QCD.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure; few references added; close to the final published versio