First-principles and model simulation of all-optical spin reversal

All-optical spin switching is a potential trailblazer for information storage and communication at an unprecedented fast rate and free of magnetic fields. However, the current wisdom is largely based on semiempirical models of effective magnetic fields and heat pulses, so it is difficult to provide high-speed design protocols for actual devices. Here, we carry out a massively parallel first-principles and model calculation for thirteen spin systems and magnetic layers, free of any effective field, to establish a simpler and alternative paradigm of laser-induced ultrafast spin reversal and to point out a path to a full-integrated photospintronic device. It is the interplay of the optical selection rule and sublattice spin orderings that underlines seemingly irreconcilable helicity-dependent/independent switchings. Using realistic experimental parameters, we predict that strong ferrimagnets, in particular, Laves phase C15 rare-earth alloys, meet the telecommunication energy requirement of 10 fJ, thus allowing a cost-effective subpicosecond laser to switch spin in the GHz region.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figures and one tabl

MvSSIM: A quality assessment index for hyperspectral images

Quality assessment indexes play a fundamental role in the analysis of hyperspectral image (HSI) cubes. To assess the quality of an HSI cube, the structural similarity (SSIM) index has been widely applied in a band-by-band manner, as SSIM was originally designed for 2D images, and then the mean SSIM (MeanSSIM) index over all bands is adopted. MeanSSIM fails to accommodate the spectral structure which is a unique characteristic of HSI. Hence in this paper, we propose a new and simple multivariate SSIM (MvSSIM) index for HSI, by treating the pixel spectrum as a multivariate random vector. MvSSIM maintains SSIM’s ability to assess the spatial structural similarity via correlation between two images of the same band; and adds an ability to assess the spectral structural similarity via covariance among different bands. MvSSIM is well founded on multivariate statistics and can be easily implemented through simple sample statistics involving mean vectors, covariance matrices and cross-covariance matrices. Experiments show that MvSSIM is a proper quality assessment index for distorted HSIs with different kinds of degradations

Black hole mass and accretion rate of active galactic nuclei with double-peaked broad emission lines

(Abridged) Using an empirical relation between the broad line region size and optical continuum luminosity, we estimated the black hole mass and accretion rate for 135 AGNs with double-peaked broad emission lines in two samples. With black hole masses from $3\times 10^7M_\odot$ to $5\times 10^9M_\odot$, these AGNs have the dimensionless accretion rates (Eddington ratios) between 0.001 and 0.1, and the bolometric luminosity between $10^{43}erg/s$ and $10^{46}erg/s$, both being significantly larger than those of several previously known low-luminosity double-peaked AGNs. The optical-X-ray spectra indices, $\alpha_{OX}$, of these high-luminosity double-peaked AGNs is between 1 and 1.9. Modest correlations of the $\alpha_{OX}$ value with the Eddington ratio and bolometric luminosity indicate that double-peaked AGNs with higher Eddington ratio or higher luminosity tend to have larger $\alpha_{OX}$ value. Therefore we suggested that the accretion process in some high-luminosity double-peaked AGNs is probably different from that of low-luminosity objects where an ADAF-like accretion flow was thought to exist. This is also supported by the presence of possible big blue bumps in the spectra of some double-peaked AGNs with higher Eddington ratios. We noticed that the prototype double-peaked emission line AGN, Arp 102B, may be an ``intermediate'' object between the high and low luminosity double-peaked AGNs. In addition, we found an apparent strong anti-correlation between the peak separation of double-peaked profile and Eddington ratio. If it is real, it may provide us a clue to understand why double-peaked broad emission lines were hardly found in luminous AGNs with Eddington ratio larger than 0.1.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures, accepted by Ap

Experimentally obtaining the Likeness of Two Unknown Quantum States on an NMR Quantum Information Processor

Recently quantum states discrimination has been frequently studied. In this paper we study them from the other way round, the likeness of two quantum states. The fidelity is used to describe the likeness of two quantum states. Then we presented a scheme to obtain the fidelity of two unknown qubits directly from the integral area of the spectra of the assistant qubit(spin) on an NMR Quantum Information Processor. Finally we demonstrated the scheme on a three-qubit quantum information processor. The experimental data are consistent with the theoretical expectation with an average error of 0.05, which confirms the scheme.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figure

A path-aware approach to mutant reduction in mutation testing

Context: Mutation testing, which systematically generates a set of mutants by seeding various faults into the base program under test, is a popular technique for evaluating the effectiveness of a testing method. However, it normally requires the execution of a large amount of mutants and thus incurs a high cost. Objective: A common way to decrease the cost of mutation testing is mutant reduction, which selects a subset of representative mutants. In this paper, we propose a new mutant reduction approach from the perspective of program structure. Method: Our approach attempts to explore path information of the program under test, and select mutants that are as diverse as possible with respect to the paths they cover. We define two path-aware heuristic rules, namely module-depth and loop-depth rules, and combine them with statement- and operator-based mutation selection to develop four mutant reduction strategies. Results: We evaluated the cost-effectiveness of our mutant reduction strategies against random mutant selection on 11 real-life C programs with varying sizes and sampling ratios. Our empirical studies show that two of our mutant reduction strategies, which primarily rely on the path-aware heuristic rules, are more effective and systematic than pure random mutant selection strategy in terms of selecting more representative mutants. In addition, among all four strategies, the one giving loop-depth the highest priority has the highest effectiveness. Conclusion: In general, our path-aware approach can reduce the number of mutants without jeopardizing its effectiveness, and thus significantly enhance the overall cost-effectiveness of mutation testing. Our approach is particularly useful for the mutation testing on large-scale complex programs that normally involve a huge amount of mutants with diverse fault characteristics

On Hypothesis Testing for Comparing Image Quality Assessment Metrics [Tips & Tricks]

In developing novel image quality assessment (IQA) metrics, researchers should compare their proposed metrics with state-of-the-art metrics. A commonly adopted approach is by comparing two residuals between the nonlinearly mapped scores of two IQA metrics and the difference mean opinion score, which are assumed from Gaussian distributions with zero means. An F-test is then used to test the equality of variances of the two sets of residuals. If the variances are significantly different, then we conclude that the residuals are from different Gaussian distributions and that the two IQA metrics are significantly different. The F-test assumes that the two sets of residuals are independent. However, given that the IQA metrics are calculated on the same database, the two sets of residuals are paired and may be correlated. We note this improper usage of the F-test by practitioners, which can result in misleading comparison results of two IQA metrics. To solve this practical problem, we introduce the Pitman test to investigate the equality of variances for two sets of correlated residuals. Experiments on the Laboratory for Image and Video Engineering (LIVE) database show that the two tests can provide different conclusions