Mott Insulator-Superfluid Transition in a Generalized Bose-Hubbard Model with Topologically Non-trivial Flat-Band

In this paper, we studied a generalized Bose-Hubbard model on a checkerboard lattice with topologically nontrivial flat-band. We used mean-field method to decouple the model Hamiltonian and obtained phase diagram by Landau theory of second-order phase transition. We further calculate the energy gap and the dispersion of quasi-particle or quasi-hole in Mott insulator state and found that in strong interaction limit the quasi-particles or the quasi-holes also have flat bands.Comment: 13 figures, 9 page

Nuclei/Cell Detection in Microscopic Skeletal Muscle Fiber Images and Histopathological Brain Tumor Images Using Sparse Optimizations

Nuclei/Cell detection is usually a prerequisite procedure in many computer-aided biomedical image analysis tasks. In this thesis we propose two automatic nuclei/cell detection frameworks. One is for nuclei detection in skeletal muscle fiber images and the other is for brain tumor histopathological images. For skeletal muscle fiber images, the major challenges include: i) shape and size variations of the nuclei, ii) overlapping nuclear clumps, and iii) a series of z-stack images with out-of-focus regions. We propose a novel automatic detection algorithm consisting of the following components: 1) The original z-stack images are first converted into one all-in-focus image. 2) A sufficient number of hypothetical ellipses are then generated for each nuclei contour. 3) Next, a set of representative training samples and discriminative features are selected by a two-stage sparse model. 4) A classifier is trained using the refined training data. 5) Final nuclei detection is obtained by mean-shift clustering based on inner distance. The proposed method was tested on a set of images containing over 1500 nuclei. The results outperform the current state-of-the-art approaches. For brain tumor histopathological images, the major challenges are to handle significant variations in cell appearance and to split touching cells. The proposed novel automatic cell detection consists of: 1) Sparse reconstruction for splitting touching cells. 2) Adaptive dictionary learning for handling cell appearance variations. The proposed method was extensively tested on a data set with over 2000 cells. The result outperforms other state-of-the-art algorithms with F1 score = 0.96

Generating arbitrary photon-number entangled states for continuous-variable quantum informatics

We propose two experimental schemes that can produce an arbitrary photon-number entangled state (PNES) in a finite dimension. This class of entangled states naturally includes non-Gaussian continuous-variable (CV) states that may provide some practical advantages over the Gaussian counterparts (two-mode squeezed states). We particularly compare the entanglement characteristics of the Gaussian and the non-Gaussian states in view of the degree of entanglement and the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlation, and further discuss their applications to the CV teleportation and the nonlocality test. The experimental imperfection due to the on-off photodetectors with nonideal efficiency is also considered in our analysis to show the feasibility of our schemes within existing technologies.Comment: published version, 13 pages, 7 figure

Spin Current and Current-Induced Spin Transfer Torque in Ferromagnet-Quantum Dot-Ferromagnet Coupled Systems

Based on Keldysh's nonequilibrium Green function method, the spin-dependent transport properties in a ferromagnet-quantum dot (QD)-ferromagnet coupled system are investigated. It is shown the spin current shows quite different characteristics from its electrical counterpart, and by changing the relative orientation of both magnetizations, it can change its magnitude even sign. The current-induced spin transfer torque (CISTT) is uncovered to be greatly enhanced when the bias voltage meets with the discrete levels of the QD at resonant positions. The relationship between the CISTT, the electrical current and the spin current is also addressed.Comment: 21 pages, 8 figure