Lip2AudSpec: Speech reconstruction from silent lip movements video

In this study, we propose a deep neural network for reconstructing intelligible speech from silent lip movement videos. We use auditory spectrogram as spectral representation of speech and its corresponding sound generation method resulting in a more natural sounding reconstructed speech. Our proposed network consists of an autoencoder to extract bottleneck features from the auditory spectrogram which is then used as target to our main lip reading network comprising of CNN, LSTM and fully connected layers. Our experiments show that the autoencoder is able to reconstruct the original auditory spectrogram with a 98% correlation and also improves the quality of reconstructed speech from the main lip reading network. Our model, trained jointly on different speakers is able to extract individual speaker characteristics and gives promising results of reconstructing intelligible speech with superior word recognition accuracy

Explanation of the ATLAS Z-peaked excess by squark pair production in the NMSSM

The ATLAS collaboration recently reported a $3\sigma$ excess in the leptonic-$Z+jets+E_{T}^{miss}$ channel. We intend to interpret this excess by squark pair production in the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM). The decay chain we employ is $\tilde{q} \to q \tilde{\chi}_2^0 \to q \tilde{\chi}_1^0 Z$, where $\tilde{\chi}_1^0$ and $\tilde{\chi}_2^0$ denote the lightest and the next-to-lightest neutralinos with singlino and bino as their dominant components respectively. Our simulations indicate that after considering the constraints from the ATLAS searches for $jets + E_{T}^{miss}$ signal the central value of the excess can be obtained for $m_{\tilde{q}} \lesssim 1.2 {\rm TeV}$, and if the constraint from the CMS on-$Z$ search is further considered, more than 10 signal events are still attainable for $m_{\tilde{q}} \lesssim 750 {\rm GeV}$. Compared with the interpretation by gluino pair production, the squark explanation allows for a significantly wider range of $m_{\tilde{q}}$ as well as a less compressed SUSY mass spectrum. We also show that the squark explanation will be readily tested at the initial stage of the 14 TeV LHC.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure

Explanation of the ATLAS Z-peaked excess in the NMSSM

Recently the ATLAS collaboration reported a $3\sigma$ excess in the leptonic-$Z+jets+E_{T}^{miss}$ channel. This may be interpreted in the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM) by gluino pair production with the decay chain $\tilde{g} \to q \bar{q} \tilde{\chi}_2^0 \to q \bar{q} Z \tilde{\chi}_1^0$, where $\tilde{\chi}_1^0$ and $\tilde{\chi}_2^0$ denote the lightest and the next-to-lightest neutralinos with singlino and bino as their dominant components respectively. After exploring the relevant parameter space of the NMSSM by considering the constraints from the ATLAS searches for $jets + E_{T}^{miss}$ signals, we conclude that the NMSSM is able to explain the excess at $1 \sigma$ level with the number of the signal events reaching its measured central value in optimal cases, and the best explanation comes from a compressed spectrum such as $m_{\tilde{g}} \simeq 650 {\rm GeV}$, $m_{\tilde{\chi}_2^0} \simeq 565 {\rm GeV}$ and $m_{\tilde{\chi}_1^0} \simeq 465 {\rm GeV}$. We also check the consistency of the ATLAS results with the null result of the CMS on-$Z$ search. We find that under the CMS limits at $95\%$ C.L., the event number of the ATLAS on-$Z$ signal can still reach 11 in our scenario, which is about $1.2 \sigma$ away from the measured central value.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figure