12,647 research outputs found
Collective resonances in plasmonic crystals: Size matters
Periodic arrays of metallic nanoparticles may sustain Surface Lattice
Resonances (SLRs), which are collective resonances associated with the
diffractive coupling of Localized Surface Plasmon Resonances (LSPRs). By
investigating a series of arrays with varying number of particles, we traced
the evolution of SLRs to its origins. Polarization resolved extinction spectra
of arrays formed by a few nanoparticles were measured, and found to be in very
good agreement with calculations based on a coupled dipole model. Finite size
effects on the optical properties of the arrays are observed, and our results
provide insight into the characteristic length scales for collective plasmonic
effects: for arrays smaller than 5 x 5 particles, the Q-factors of SLRs are
lower than those of LSPRs; for arrays larger than 20 x 20 particles, the
Q-factors of SLRs saturate at a much larger value than those of LSPRs; in
between, the Q-factors of SLRs are an increasing function of the number of
particles in the array.Comment: 4 figure
Stability of Influence Maximization
The present article serves as an erratum to our paper of the same title,
which was presented and published in the KDD 2014 conference. In that article,
we claimed falsely that the objective function defined in Section 1.4 is
non-monotone submodular. We are deeply indebted to Debmalya Mandal, Jean
Pouget-Abadie and Yaron Singer for bringing to our attention a counter-example
to that claim.
Subsequent to becoming aware of the counter-example, we have shown that the
objective function is in fact NP-hard to approximate to within a factor of
for any .
In an attempt to fix the record, the present article combines the problem
motivation, models, and experimental results sections from the original
incorrect article with the new hardness result. We would like readers to only
cite and use this version (which will remain an unpublished note) instead of
the incorrect conference version.Comment: Erratum of Paper "Stability of Influence Maximization" which was
presented and published in the KDD1
Formation of laser-induced periodic surface structures on niobium by femtosecond laser irradiation
Counterfactual Explanations in Sequential Decision Making Under Uncertainty
Methods to find counterfactual explanations have predominantly focused on one step decision making processes. In this work, we initiate the development of methods to find counterfactual explanations for decision making processes in which multiple, dependent actions are taken sequentially over time. We start by formally characterizing a sequence of actions and states using finite horizon Markov decision processes and the Gumbel-Max structural causal model. Building upon this characterization, we formally state the problem of finding counterfactual explanations for sequential decision making processes. In our problem formulation, the counterfactual explanation specifies an alternative sequence of actions differing in at most k actions from the observed sequence that could have led the observed process realization to a better outcome. Then, we introduce a polynomial time algorithm based on dynamic programming to build a counterfactual policy that is guaranteed to always provide the optimal counterfactual explanation on every possible realization of the counterfactual environment dynamics. We validate our algorithm using both synthetic and real data from cognitive behavioral therapy and show that the counterfactual explanations our algorithm finds can provide valuable insights to enhance sequential decision making under uncertainty
Thermalization and Cooling of Plasmon-Exciton Polaritons: Towards Quantum Condensation
We present indications of thermalization and cooling of quasi-particles, a
precursor for quantum condensation, in a plasmonic nanoparticle array. We
investigate a periodic array of metallic nanorods covered by a polymer layer
doped with an organic dye at room temperature. Surface lattice resonances of
the array---hybridized plasmonic/photonic modes---couple strongly to excitons
in the dye, and bosonic quasi-particles which we call
plasmon-exciton-polaritons (PEPs) are formed. By increasing the PEP density
through optical pumping, we observe thermalization and cooling of the strongly
coupled PEP band in the light emission dispersion diagram. For increased
pumping, we observe saturation of the strong coupling and emission in a new
weakly coupled band, which again shows signatures of thermalization and
cooling.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures including supplemental material. The newest
version includes new measurements and corrections to the interpretation of
the result
From weak to strong coupling of localized surface plasmons to guided modes in a luminescent slab
We investigate a periodic array of aluminum nanoantennas embedded in a
light-emitting slab waveguide. By varying the waveguide thickness we
demonstrate the transition from weak to strong coupling between localized
surface plasmons in the nanoantennas and refractive index guided modes in the
waveguide. We experimentally observe a non-trivial relationship between
extinction and emission dispersion diagrams across the weak to strong coupling
transition. These results have implications for a broad class of photonic
structures where sources are embedded within coupled resonators. For
nanoantenna arrays, strong vs. weak coupling leads to drastic modifications of
radiation patterns without modifying the nanoantennas themselves, thereby
representing an unprecedented design strategy for nanoscale light sources
Evolution of Conversations in the Age of Email Overload
Email is a ubiquitous communications tool in the workplace and plays an
important role in social interactions. Previous studies of email were largely
based on surveys and limited to relatively small populations of email users
within organizations. In this paper, we report results of a large-scale study
of more than 2 million users exchanging 16 billion emails over several months.
We quantitatively characterize the replying behavior in conversations within
pairs of users. In particular, we study the time it takes the user to reply to
a received message and the length of the reply sent. We consider a variety of
factors that affect the reply time and length, such as the stage of the
conversation, user demographics, and use of portable devices. In addition, we
study how increasing load affects emailing behavior. We find that as users
receive more email messages in a day, they reply to a smaller fraction of them,
using shorter replies. However, their responsiveness remains intact, and they
may even reply to emails faster. Finally, we predict the time to reply, length
of reply, and whether the reply ends a conversation. We demonstrate
considerable improvement over the baseline in all three prediction tasks,
showing the significant role that the factors that we uncover play, in
determining replying behavior. We rank these factors based on their predictive
power. Our findings have important implications for understanding human
behavior and designing better email management applications for tasks like
ranking unread emails.Comment: 11 page, 24th International World Wide Web Conferenc
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