Speech Enhancement Using An {MMSE} Spectral Amplitude Estimator Based On A Modulation Domain Kalman Filter With A Gamma Prior

In this paper, we propose a minimum mean square error spectral estimator for clean speech spectral amplitudes that uses a Kalman filter to model the temporal dynamics of the spectral amplitudes in the modulation domain. Using a two-parameter Gamma distribution to model the prior distribution of the speech spectral amplitudes, we derive closed form expressions for the posterior mean and variance of the spectral amplitudes as well as for the associated update step of the Kalman filter. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated on the TIMIT core test set using the perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ) measure and segmental SNR measure and is shown to give a consistent improvement over a wide range of SNRs when compared to competitive algorithms

Rare-earth ions doped transparent oxyfluoride glass-ceramics

In recent years, rare-earth ions doped transparent oxyfluoride glass-ceramics have attracted great attentions for their low phonon energy environments of fluoride nanocrystals and high chemical and mechanical stabilities of oxide glassy matrix. In this chapter, firstly, the crystallization behaviors of the transparent glass ceramics containing CaF2 nanocrystals are presented to demonstrate the controllable microstructure evolution of nano-composites. Secondly, the optical properties of the newly developed transparent glass-ceramics containing β-YF3 nanocrystals are systematically reviewed. The rare-earth ions are inclined to partition into the YF3 nanocrystals after crystallization. Through variation of the rare-earth doping and control of the microstructures, the glass-ceramics could exhibit high-stimulated emission cross-section, broadband near infrared emission, high efficient ultraviolet upconversion emission and bright white light emission, indicating their potential multifunctional applications in solid state laser, upconversion, optical amplifier, three-dimensional display, and so on

Quantum storage and information transfer with superconducting qubits

We design theoretically a new device to realize the general quantum storage based on dcSQUID charge qubits. The distinct advantages of our scheme are analyzed in comparison with existing storage scenarios. More arrestingly, the controllable XY-model spin interaction has been realized for the first time in superconducting qubits, which may have more potential applications besides those in quantum information processing. The experimental feasibility is also elaborated.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Notions of Input to Output Stability

This paper deals with several related notions of output stability with respect to inputs. The inputs may be thought of as disturbances; when there are no inputs, one obtains generalizations of the classical concepts of partial stability. The main notion studied is called input to output stability (IOS), and it reduces to input to state stability (ISS) when the output equals the complete state. Several variants, which formalize in different manners the transient behavior, are introduced. The main results provide a comparison among these notions. A companion paper establishes necessary and sufficient Lyapunov-theoretic characterizations.Comment: 16 pages See http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~sontag/ for many related paper

Effect of depreciation of the public goods in spatial public goods games

In this work, depreciated effect of the public goods is considered in the public goods games, which is realized by rescaling the multiplication factor r of each group as r' = r(nc/G)^beta (beat>= 0). It is assumed that each individual enjoys the full profit of the public goods if all the players of this group are cooperators, otherwise, the value of the public goods is reduced to r'. It is found that compared with the original version (beta = 0), emergence of cooperation is remarkably promoted for beta > 0, and there exit optimal values of beta inducing the best cooperation. Moreover, the optimal plat of beta broadens as r increases. Furthermore, effect of noise on the evolution of cooperation is studied, it is presented that variation of cooperator density with the noise is dependent of the value of beta and r, and cooperation dominates over most of the range of noise at an intermediate value of beta = 1.0. We study the initial distribution of the multiplication factor at beta = 1.0, and find that all the distributions can be described as Gauss distribution

Fast entanglement of two charge-phase qubits through nonadiabatic coupling to a large junction

We propose a theoretical protocol for quantum logic gates between two Josephson junction charge-phase qubits through the control of their coupling to a large junction. In the low excitation limit of the large junction when $E_{J}\gg E_{c}$, it behaves effectively as a quantum data-bus mode of a harmonic oscillator. Our protocol is efficient and fast. In addition, it does not require the data-bus to stay adiabatically in its ground state, as such it can be implemented over a wide parameter regime independent of the data-bus quantum state.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur

Adiabatic State Conversion and Pulse Transmission in Optomechanical Systems

Optomechanical systems with strong coupling can be a powerful medium for quantum state engineering. Here, we show that quantum state conversion between cavity modes with different wavelengths can be realized with high fidelity by adiabatically varying the effective optomechanical couplings. The fidelity for the conversion of gaussian states is derived by solving the Langevin equation in the adiabatic limit. We also show that photon pulses can be transmitted between input-output channels with different wavelengths via the effective optomechanical couplings and the output pulse shape can also be manipulated.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures. Supplementary Materials at http://prl.aps.org/supplemental/PRL/v108/i15/e15360

A multi-agent based evolutionary algorithm in non-stationary environments

This article is posted here with permission of IEEE - Copyright @ 2008 IEEEIn this paper, a multi-agent based evolutionary algorithm (MAEA) is introduced to solve dynamic optimization problems. The agents simulate living organism features and co-evolve to find optimum. All agents live in a lattice like environment, where each agent is fixed on a lattice point. In order to increase the energy, agents can compete with their neighbors and can also acquire knowledge based on statistic information. In order to maintain the diversity of the population, the random immigrants and adaptive primal dual mapping schemes are used. Simulation experiments on a set of dynamic benchmark problems show that MAEA can obtain a better performance in non-stationary environments in comparison with several peer genetic algorithms.This work was suported by the Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 70431003, the Science Fund for Creative Research Group of the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 60521003, the National Science and Technology Support Plan of China under Grant No. 2006BAH02A09, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council of the United Kingdom under Grant No. EP/E060722/1

General response theory of topologically stable Fermi points and its implications for disordered cases

We develop a general response theory of gapless Fermi points with nontrivial topological charges for gauge and nonlinear sigma fields, which asserts that the topological character of the Fermi points is embodied as the terms with discrete coefficients proportional to the corresponding topological charges. Applying the theory to the effective non-linear sigma models for topological Fermi points with disorders in the framework of replica approach, we derive rigorously the Wess-Zumino terms with the topological charges being their levels in the two complex symmetry classes of A and AIII. Intriguingly, two nontrivial examples of quadratic Fermi points with the topological charge `2' are respectively illustrated for the classes A and AIII. We also address a qualitative connection of topological charges of Fermi points in the real symmetry classes to the topological terms in the non-linear sigma models, based on the one-to-one classification correspondence.Comment: 8 pages and 2 figures, revised version with appendi