Lookahead Strategies for Sequential Monte Carlo

Based on the principles of importance sampling and resampling, sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) encompasses a large set of powerful techniques dealing with complex stochastic dynamic systems. Many of these systems possess strong memory, with which future information can help sharpen the inference about the current state. By providing theoretical justification of several existing algorithms and introducing several new ones, we study systematically how to construct efficient SMC algorithms to take advantage of the "future" information without creating a substantially high computational burden. The main idea is to allow for lookahead in the Monte Carlo process so that future information can be utilized in weighting and generating Monte Carlo samples, or resampling from samples of the current state.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/12-STS401 the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

A novel explanation of charmonium-like structure in e+e−→ψ(2S)π+π−e^+e^-\to \psi(2S)\pi^+\pi^-

We first present a non-resonant description to charmonium-like structure $Y(4360)$ in the $\psi(2S)\pi^+\pi^-$ invariant mass spectrum of the $e^+e^-\to \psi(2S)\pi^+\pi^-$ process. The $Y(4360)$ structure is depicted well by the interference effect of the production amplitudes of $e^{+} e^{-} \to \psi(2S) \pi^+ \pi^-$ via the intermediate charmonia $\psi(4160)/\psi(4415)$ and direct $e^+e^-$ annihilation into $\psi(2S)\pi^+ \pi^-$. This fact shows that $Y(4360)$ is not a genuine resonance, which naturally explains why $Y(4360)$ was only reported in its hidden-charm decay channel $\psi(2S)\pi^+\pi^-$ and was not observed in the exclusive open-charm decay channel or $R$-value scan.Comment: 4 pages, 1 table, 2 figures. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Symmetry Reduction and Boundary Modes for Fe-Chains on an s-wave Superconductor

We investigate the superconducting phase diagram and boundary modes for a quasi-1D system formed by three Fe-Chains on an s-wave superconductor, motivated by the recent Princeton experiment. The $\vec l\cdot\vec s$ onsite spin-orbit term, inter-chain diagonal hopping couplings, and magnetic disorders in the Fe-chains are shown to be crucial for the superconducting phases, which can be topologically trivial or nontrivial in different parameter regimes. For the topological regime a single Majorana and multiple Andreew bound modes are obtained in the ends of the chain, while for the trivial phase only low-energy Andreev bound states survive. Nontrivial symmetry reduction mechanism induced by the $\vec l\cdot\vec s$ term, diagonal hopping couplings, and magnetic disorder is uncovered to interpret the present results. Our study also implies that the zero-bias peak observed in the recent experiment may or may not reflect the Majorana zero modes in the end of the Fe-chains.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures; some minor errors are correcte