Superfluid and magnetic states of an ultracold Bose gas with synthetic three-dimensional spin-orbit coupling in an optical lattice

We study ultracold bosonic atoms with the synthetic three-dimensional spin-orbit (SO) coupling in a cubic optical lattice. In the superfluidity phase, the lowest energy band exhibits one, two or four pairs of degenerate single-particle ground states depending on the SO-coupling strengths, which can give rise to the condensate states with spin-stripes for the weak atomic interactions. In the deep Mott-insulator regime, the effective spin Hamiltonian of the system combines three-dimensional Heisenberg exchange interactions, anisotropy interactions and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions. Based on Monte Carlo simulations, we numerically demonstrate that the resulting Hamiltonian with an additional Zeeman field has a rich phase diagram with spiral, stripe, vortex crystal, and especially Skyrmion crystal spin-textures in each xy-plane layer. The obtained Skyrmion crystals can be tunable with square and hexagonal symmetries in a columnar manner along the z axis, and moreover are stable against the inter-layer spin-spin interactions in a large parameter region.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures; title modified, references and discussions added; accepted by PR

BakedAvatar: Baking Neural Fields for Real-Time Head Avatar Synthesis

Synthesizing photorealistic 4D human head avatars from videos is essential for VR/AR, telepresence, and video game applications. Although existing Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF)-based methods achieve high-fidelity results, the computational expense limits their use in real-time applications. To overcome this limitation, we introduce BakedAvatar, a novel representation for real-time neural head avatar synthesis, deployable in a standard polygon rasterization pipeline. Our approach extracts deformable multi-layer meshes from learned isosurfaces of the head and computes expression-, pose-, and view-dependent appearances that can be baked into static textures for efficient rasterization. We thus propose a three-stage pipeline for neural head avatar synthesis, which includes learning continuous deformation, manifold, and radiance fields, extracting layered meshes and textures, and fine-tuning texture details with differential rasterization. Experimental results demonstrate that our representation generates synthesis results of comparable quality to other state-of-the-art methods while significantly reducing the inference time required. We further showcase various head avatar synthesis results from monocular videos, including view synthesis, face reenactment, expression editing, and pose editing, all at interactive frame rates.Comment: ACM Transactions on Graphics (SIGGRAPH Asia 2023). Project Page: https://buaavrcg.github.io/BakedAvata

Estimation of advective methane flux in gas hydrate potential area offshore SW Taiwan and its tectonic implications

With the discoveries of Bottom Simulating Reflectors (BSRs), large and dense chemosynthetic communities and rapid sulfate reductions in pore space sediments, gas hydrates may exist in offshore southwestern Taiwan. Methane concentrations in pore space sediments have been measured to investigate if fluids and gases are derived from dissociation of gas hydrates. Very high methane concentrations and very shallow depths of sulfate methane interface (SMI) imply the high methane flux underneath the seafloor. Linear sulfate gradients, low total organic carbon (TOC) have been combined to describe the process of anaerobic methane oxidation (AMO) and calculate the iffusive methane flux in Chuang et al. (2010). However, the appearance of concave (or non-linear) profiles of sulfate in some cores might indicate advective fluid flows. Hence, the methane flux may be much greater under advective conditions. In this study, numerical transport-reaction models were applied to calculate the methane flux including diffusion and advection of dissolved sulfate and methane and the anaerobic methane oxidation of methane. According to the modeled results of three giant piston cores (MD05-2911, MD05-2912 and MD05-2913) collected during the r/v Marion Dufresne cruise in 2005, gas bubbling or bioirrigation may occur in these site. Values of the methane flux ranging from 1.91 to 5.17 mmol m-2yr-1 and upward fluid flow velocities around 0.05-0.13 cm yr-1 are related to different geologic structures in the active continental margin. Site MD05-2912 is located on the Tainan Ridge where anticlines and blind thrusts are the dominate structures. Site MD052911 is on the Yung-An Ridge characterized by emergent and imbricate thrusts

Experimental research on internal convection heat transfer of supercritical pressure CO2 in porous media

The flow and heat transfer of fluids at supercritical pressure in porous media has attracted much attention due to its extensive applications, such as supercritical water-cooled nuclear reactor, CO2 gas cooled reactor, transpiration cooling and supercritical CO2 solar thermal power generation system. There are mainly two theories to describe convection heat transfer in porous media, i.e., the local thermal equilibrium model (LTE) and the local thermal non-equilibrium model (LTNE). Compared with LTE model, the LTNE model is a more detailed model that uses two energy equations to describe heat transport in the solid and fluid. The internal heat transfer coefficient is a key parameter for LTNE model which has been studied thoroughly and many correlations have been proposed. Please download the full abstract below

Demineralized Bone Matrix Combined Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells, Bone Morphogenetic Protein-2 and Transforming Growth Factor-β3 Gene Promoted Pig Cartilage Defect Repair

Objectives To investigate whether a combination of demineralized bone matrix (DBM) and bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) infected with adenovirus-mediated- bone morphogenetic protein (Ad-BMP-2) and transforming growth factor-β3 (Ad-TGF-β3) promotes the repair of the full-thickness cartilage lesions in pig model. Methods BMSCs isolated from pig were cultured and infected with Ad-BMP-2(B group), Ad-TGF-β3 (T group), Ad-BMP-2 + Ad-TGF-β3(BT group), cells infected with empty Ad served as a negative group(N group), the expression of the BMP-2 and TGF-β3 were confirmed by immunofluorescence, PCR, and ELISA, the expression of SOX-9, type II collagen(COL-2A), aggrecan (ACAN) in each group were evaluated by real-time PCR at 1w, 2w, 3w, respectively. The chondrogenic differentiation of BMSCs was evaluated by type II collagen at 21d with immunohistochemical staining. The third-passage BMSCs infected with Ad-BMP-2 and Ad-TGF-β3 were suspended and cultured with DBM for 6 days to construct a new type of tissue engineering scaffold to repair full-thickness cartilage lesions in the femur condyles of pig knee, the regenerated tissue was evaluated at 1,2 and 3 months after surgery by gross appearance, H&E, safranin O staining and O\u27driscoll score. Results Ad-BMP-2 and Ad-TGF-β3 (BT group) infected cells acquired strong type II collagen staining compared with Ad-BMP-2 (B group) and Ad-TGF-β3 (T group) along. The Ad-BMP-2 and Ad-TGF-β3 infected BMSCs adhered and propagated well in DBM and the new type of tissue engineering scaffold produced hyaline cartilage morphology containing a stronger type II collagen and safranin O staining, the O\u27driscoll score was higher than other groups. Conclusions The DBM compound with Ad-BMP-2 and Ad-TGF-β3 infected BMSCs scaffold has a good biocompatibility and could well induce cartilage regeneration to repair the defects of joint cartilage. This technology may be efficiently employed for cartilage lesions repair in vivo

Placement Optimization for Multi-IRS-Aided Wireless Communications: An Adaptive Differential Evolution Algorithm

Using intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) is a promising approach to enhance the performance of wireless communication systems. In this paper, the placement optimization of multi-IRSs is investigated in multi-IRS-aided wireless communication systems, with the aim of minimizing the number of IRSs subject to the average achievable data rate. Then, an adaptive differential evolution algorithm is developed to jointly optimize the number, locations, and phase shift coefficients of IRSs, in which a novel strategy is devised to adaptively select the mutation operator for each individual. Compared with other algorithms, the proposed algorithm performs well in reducing the number of IRSs while satisfying the average achievable data rate