A Novel Self-Intersection Penalty Term for Statistical Body Shape Models and Its Applications in 3D Pose Estimation

Statistical body shape models are widely used in 3D pose estimation due to their low-dimensional parameters representation. However, it is difficult to avoid self-intersection between body parts accurately. Motivated by this fact, we proposed a novel self-intersection penalty term for statistical body shape models applied in 3D pose estimation. To avoid the trouble of computing self-intersection for complex surfaces like the body meshes, the gradient of our proposed self-intersection penalty term is manually derived from the perspective of geometry. First, the self-intersection penalty term is defined as the volume of the self-intersection region. To calculate the partial derivatives with respect to the coordinates of the vertices, we employed detection rays to divide vertices of statistical body shape models into different groups depending on whether the vertex is in the region of self-intersection. Second, the partial derivatives could be easily derived by the normal vectors of neighboring triangles of the vertices. Finally, this penalty term could be applied in gradient-based optimization algorithms to remove the self-intersection of triangular meshes without using any approximation. Qualitative and quantitative evaluations were conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and generality of our proposed method compared with previous approaches. The experimental results show that our proposed penalty term can avoid self-intersection to exclude unreasonable predictions and improves the accuracy of 3D pose estimation indirectly. Further more, the proposed method could be employed universally in triangular mesh based 3D reconstruction

Optimization on fixed low latency implementation of GBT protocol in FPGA

In the upgrade of ATLAS experiment, the front-end electronics components are subjected to a large radiation background. Meanwhile high speed optical links are required for the data transmission between the on-detector and off-detector electronics. The GBT architecture and the Versatile Link (VL) project are designed by CERN to support the 4.8 Gbps line rate bidirectional high-speed data transmission which is called GBT link. In the ATLAS upgrade, besides the link with on-detector, the GBT link is also used between different off-detector systems. The GBTX ASIC is designed for the on-detector front-end, correspondingly for the off-detector electronics, the GBT architecture is implemented in Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA). CERN launches the GBT-FPGA project to provide examples in different types of FPGA. In the ATLAS upgrade framework, the Front-End LInk eXchange (FELIX) system is used to interface the front-end electronics of several ATLAS subsystems. The GBT link is used between them, to transfer the detector data and the timing, trigger, control and monitoring information. The trigger signal distributed in the down-link from FELIX to the front-end requires a fixed and low latency. In this paper, several optimizations on the GBT-FPGA IP core are introduced, to achieve a lower fixed latency. For FELIX, a common firmware will be used to interface different front-ends with support of both GBT modes: the forward error correction mode and the wide mode. The modified GBT-FPGA core has the ability to switch between the GBT modes without FPGA reprogramming. The system clock distribution of the multi-channel FELIX firmware is also discussed in this paper

Projected Density Matrix Embedding Theory with Applications to the Two-Dimensional Hubbard Model

Density matrix embedding theory (DMET) is a quantum embedding theory for strongly correlated systems. From a computational perspective, one bottleneck in DMET is the optimization of the correlation potential to achieve self-consistency, especially for heterogeneous systems of large size. We propose a new method, called projected density matrix embedding theory (p-DMET), which achieves self-consistency without needing to optimize a correlation potential. We demonstrate the performance of p-DMET on the two-dimensional Hubbard model.Comment: 25 pages, 8 figure

Conditioning of BPM pickup signals for operations of the Duke storage ring with a wide range of single-bunch current

The Duke storage ring is a dedicated driver for the storage ring based oscillator free-electron lasers (FELs), and the High Intensity Gamma-ray Source (HIGS). It is operated with a beam current ranging from about 1 mA to 100 mA per bunch for various operations and accelerator physics studies. High performance operations of the FEL and gamma-ray source require a stable electron beam orbit, which has been realized by the global orbit feedback system. As a critical part of the orbit feedback system, the electron beam position monitors (BPMs) are required to be able to precisely measure the electron beam orbit in a wide range of the single-bunch current. However, the high peak voltage of the BPM pickups associated with high single-bunch current degrades the performance of the BPM electronics, and can potentially damage the BPM electronics. A signal conditioning method using low pass filters is developed to reduce the peak voltage to protect the BPM electronics, and to make the BPMs capable of working with a wide range of single-bunch current. Simulations and electron beam based tests are performed. The results show that the Duke storage ring BPM system is capable of providing precise orbit measurements to ensure highly stable FEL and HIGS operations