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Oct 16

Nonequilibrium Phenomena in Driven and Active Coulomb Field Theories

The classical Coulomb gas model has served as one of the most versatile frameworks in statistical physics, connecting a vast range of phenomena across many different areas. Nonequilibrium generalisations of this model have so far been studied much more scarcely. With the abundance of contemporary research into active and driven systems, one would naturally expect that such generalisations of systems with long-ranged Coulomb-like interactions will form a fertile playground for interesting developments. Here, we present two examples of novel macroscopic behaviour that arise from nonequilibrium fluctuations in long-range interacting systems, namely (1) unscreened long-ranged correlations in strong electrolytes driven by an external electric field and the associated fluctuation-induced forces in the confined Casimir geometry, and (2) out-of-equilibrium critical behaviour in self-chemotactic models that incorporate the particle polarity in the chemotactic response of the cells. Both of these systems have nonlocal Coulomb-like interactions among their constituent particles, namely, the electrostatic interactions in the case of the driven electrolyte, and the chemotactic forces mediated by fast-diffusing signals in the case of self-chemotactic systems. The results presented here hint to the rich phenomenology of nonequilibrium effects that can arise from strong fluctuations in Coulomb interacting systems, and a rich variety of potential future directions, which are discussed.

  • 2 authors
·
Jul 1, 2022

Anomaly-mediated Scalar Gravitational Interactions and the Coupling of Conformal Sectors

We investigate the anomaly-induced activation of a gauge-invariant scalar degree of freedom in General Relativity, the conformalon mode, directly at the level of \(2\to2\) scattering amplitudes. The analysis couples anomalous three-point functions of conformal sectors, involving gravitons \((TTT)\) and Abelian gauge currents \((TJJ)\), through single-graviton exchange derived from the quadratic expansion of the Einstein--Hilbert action. Unlike related treatments based on the nonlocal anomaly action, these interactions are suppressed by the Planck scale. We show that the conformalon, invariant under linearized diffeomorphisms, admits an interpretation as an effective scalar correction to scattering amplitudes, both in virtual exchange channels and in effective real-emission processes. Around flat space, this behaviour arises from anomaly-induced nonlocal massless insertions on the external graviton and photon legs of the three-point functions, sewn through the scalar component of the graviton propagator in de Donder gauge. The resulting anomaly-mediated \(4\)-point interaction reduces to contact terms, with the Planck mass setting the suppression scale. The construction consistently matches the spin decomposition of flat-space conformal Ward identities in momentum space, which determine the vertices, with the corresponding spin decomposition of the graviton propagator. In the eikonal limit, these interactions generate contact corrections to the leading logarithmic phase in impact-parameter space. We further show that anomaly-mediated \(2\to2\) graviton amplitudes associated with the virtual exchange of such modes exhibit a characteristic double-copy structure.

  • 4 authors
·
Mar 31

Neural Integral Equations

Nonlinear operators with long distance spatiotemporal dependencies are fundamental in modeling complex systems across sciences, yet learning these nonlocal operators remains challenging in machine learning. Integral equations (IEs), which model such nonlocal systems, have wide ranging applications in physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering. We introduce Neural Integral Equations (NIE), a method for learning unknown integral operators from data using an IE solver. To improve scalability and model capacity, we also present Attentional Neural Integral Equations (ANIE), which replaces the integral with self-attention. Both models are grounded in the theory of second kind integral equations, where the indeterminate appears both inside and outside the integral operator. We provide theoretical analysis showing how self-attention can approximate integral operators under mild regularity assumptions, further deepening previously reported connections between transformers and integration, and deriving corresponding approximation results for integral operators. Through numerical benchmarks on synthetic and real world data, including Lotka-Volterra, Navier-Stokes, and Burgers' equations, as well as brain dynamics and integral equations, we showcase the models' capabilities and their ability to derive interpretable dynamics embeddings. Our experiments demonstrate that ANIE outperforms existing methods, especially for longer time intervals and higher dimensional problems. Our work addresses a critical gap in machine learning for nonlocal operators and offers a powerful tool for studying unknown complex systems with long range dependencies.

  • 7 authors
·
Sep 29, 2022

Towards violations of Local Friendliness with quantum computers

Local Friendliness (LF) inequalities follow from seemingly reasonable assumptions about reality: (i) ``absoluteness of observed events'' (e.g., every observed event happens for all observers) and (ii) ``local agency'' (e.g., free choices can be made uncorrelated with other events outside their future light cone). Extended Wigner's Friend Scenario (EWFS) thought experiments show that textbook quantum mechanics violates these inequalities. Thus, experimental evidence of these violations would make these two assumptions incompatible. In [Nature Physics 16, 1199 (2020)], the authors experimentally implemented an EWFS, using a photonic qubit to play the role of each of the ``friends'' and measured violations of LF. One may question whether a photonic qubit is a physical system that counts as an ``observer'' and thereby question whether the experiment's outcome is significant. Intending to measure increasingly meaningful violations, we propose using a statistical measure called the ``branch factor'' to quantify the ``observerness'' of the system. We then encode the EWFS as a quantum circuit such that the components of the circuit that define the friend are quantum systems of increasing branch factor. We run this circuit on quantum simulators and hardware devices, observing LF violations as the system sizes scale. As errors in quantum computers reduce the significance of the violations, better quantum computers can produce better violations. Our results extend the state of the art in proof-of-concept experimental violations from branch factor 0.0 to branch factor 16.0. This is an initial result in an experimental program for measuring LF violations at increasingly meaningful branch factors using increasingly more powerful quantum processors and networks. We introduce this program as a fundamental science application for near-term and developing quantum technology.

  • 3 authors
·
Sep 3, 2025

Limits of Absoluteness of Observed Events in Timelike Scenarios: A No-Go Theorem

Wigner's Friend-type paradoxes challenge the assumption that events are absolute -- that when we measure a system, we obtain a single result, which is not relative to anything or anyone else. These paradoxes highlight the tension between quantum theory and our intuitions about reality being observer-independent. Building on a recent result that developed these paradoxes into a no-go theorem, namely the Local Friendliness Theorem, we introduce the Causal Friendliness Paradox, a time-ordered analogue of it. In this framework, we replace the usual locality assumption with Axiological Time Symmetry (ATS), and show that, when combined with the assumptions of Absoluteness of Observed Events (AOE), No Retrocausality (NRC), and Screening via Pseudo Events (SPE), we obtain a causal inequality. We then show that quantum mechanics violates this inequality and is therefore incompatible with at least one of these assumptions. To probe which assumption might be incompatible, we then examine whether AOE in its entirety is essential for this no-go result. We propose a weaker, operational form of AOE that still leads to inequalities that quantum mechanics violates. This result shows that even under relaxed assumptions, quantum theory resists reconciliation with classical notions of absolute events, reinforcing the foundational significance of Wigner's Friend-type paradoxes in timelike scenarios.

  • 2 authors
·
Oct 30, 2025

Nonlinear Spectral Computing

Many machine learning algorithms rely on the Fourier transform, which is also the inner core of many analog computing devices and, specifically, of optical computing. The square of the modulus of the Fourier spectrum naturally maps onto pairwise interactions, as in the renowned Ising model, making it applicable to combinatorial optimization. Here we show how the nonlinear Fourier transform, related to integrable nonlinear partial differential equations, significantly widens the computational capability and also enables a wide variety of computing gates. We study specifically the case of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation; we introduce an input composed by ``tokens'', i.e., batches of information encoded in a multi-step potential, and we show how the nonlinear spectral computing arising in the wave propagation not only generalizes combinatorial optimization to higher order problems, but also realizes boolean gates. In the weakly nonlinear regime, nonlinearity generates higher-order interactions as perturbative corrections to the pairwise terms. In the solitonic regime, the discrete nonlinear spectrum performs digital computation through soliton generation. By using four input tokens, we demonstrate the programmability of all 256 Boolean functions of three variables, including 3-SAT instances. Our results show that integrable nonlinear propagation provides an unprecedented single physical platform for higher-order and logical computation, opening the way to a rich variety of new algorithms for analog computing, machine learning, and classical and quantum information processing.

  • 3 authors
·
Oct 5

Fluctuations and correlations in chemical reaction kinetics and population dynamics

This chapter provides a pedagogical introduction and overview of spatial and temporal correlation and fluctuation effects resulting from the fundamentally stochastic kinetics underlying chemical reactions and the dynamics of populations or epidemics. After reviewing the assumptions and mean-field type approximations involved in the construction of chemical rate equations for uniform reactant densities, we first discuss spatial clustering in birth-death systems, where non-linearities are introduced through either density-limiting pair reactions, or equivalently via local imposition of finite carrying capacities. The competition of offspring production, death, and non-linear inhibition induces a population extinction threshold, which represents a non-equilibrium phase transition that separates active from absorbing states. This continuous transition is characterized by the universal scaling exponents of critical directed percolation clusters. Next we focus on the emergence of depletion zones in single-species annihilation processes and spatial population segregation with the associated reaction fronts in two-species pair annihilation. These strong (anti-)correlation effects are dynamically generated by the underlying stochastic kinetics. Finally, we address noise-induced and fluctuation-stabilized spatio-temporal patterns in basic predator-prey systems, exemplified by spreading activity fronts in the two-species Lotka-Volterra model as well as spiral structures in the May-Leonard variant of cyclically competing three-species systems akin to rock-paper-scissors games.

  • 1 authors
·
Jul 3, 2018

Cybloids - Creation and Control of Cybernetic Colloids

Colloids play an important role in fundamental science as well as in nature and technology. They have had a strong impact on the fundamental understanding of statistical physics. For example, colloids have helped to obtain a better understanding of collective phenomena, ranging from phase transitions and glass formation to the swarming of active Brownian particles. Yet the success of colloidal systems hinges crucially on the specific physical and chemical properties of the colloidal particles, i.e. particles with the appropriate characteristics must be available. Here we present an idea to create particles with freely selectable properties. The properties might depend, for example, on the presence of other particles (hence mimicking specific pair or many-body interactions), previous configurations (hence introducing some memory or feedback), or a directional bias (hence changing the dynamics). Without directly interfering with the sample, each particle is fully controlled and can receive external commands through a predefined algorithm that can take into account any input parameters. This is realized with computer-controlled colloids, which we term cybloids - short for cybernetic colloids. The potential of cybloids is illustrated by programming a time-delayed external potential acting on a single colloid and interaction potentials for many colloids. Both an attractive harmonic potential and an annular potential are implemented. For a single particle, this programming can cause subdiffusive behavior or lend activity. For many colloids, the programmed interaction potential allows to select a crystal structure at wish. Beyond these examples, we discuss further opportunities which cybloids offer.

  • 4 authors
·
Aug 1, 2024

Continuum Attention for Neural Operators

Transformers, and the attention mechanism in particular, have become ubiquitous in machine learning. Their success in modeling nonlocal, long-range correlations has led to their widespread adoption in natural language processing, computer vision, and time series problems. Neural operators, which map spaces of functions into spaces of functions, are necessarily both nonlinear and nonlocal if they are universal; it is thus natural to ask whether the attention mechanism can be used in the design of neural operators. Motivated by this, we study transformers in the function space setting. We formulate attention as a map between infinite dimensional function spaces and prove that the attention mechanism as implemented in practice is a Monte Carlo or finite difference approximation of this operator. The function space formulation allows for the design of transformer neural operators, a class of architectures designed to learn mappings between function spaces. In this paper, we state and prove the first universal approximation result for transformer neural operators, using only a slight modification of the architecture implemented in practice. The prohibitive cost of applying the attention operator to functions defined on multi-dimensional domains leads to the need for more efficient attention-based architectures. For this reason we also introduce a function space generalization of the patching strategy from computer vision, and introduce a class of associated neural operators. Numerical results, on an array of operator learning problems, demonstrate the promise of our approaches to function space formulations of attention and their use in neural operators.

  • 4 authors
·
Dec 19, 2025

Information Theory and Statistical Mechanics Revisited

The statistical mechanics of Gibbs is a juxtaposition of subjective, probabilistic ideas on the one hand and objective, mechanical ideas on the other. In this paper, we follow the path set out by Jaynes, including elements added subsequently to that original work, to explore the consequences of the purely statistical point of view. We show how standard methods in the equilibrium theory could have been derived simply from a description of the available problem information. In addition, our presentation leads to novel insights into questions associated with symmetry and non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. Two surprising consequences to be explored in further work are that (in)distinguishability factors are automatically predicted from the problem formulation and that a quantity related to the thermodynamic entropy production is found by considering information loss in non-equilibrium processes. Using the problem of ion channel thermodynamics as an example, we illustrate the idea of building up complexity by successively adding information to create progressively more complex descriptions of a physical system. Our result is that such statistical mechanical descriptions can be used to create transparent, computable, experimentally-relevant models that may be informed by more detailed atomistic simulations. We also derive a theory for the kinetic behavior of this system, identifying the nonequilibrium `process' free energy functional. The Gibbs relation for this functional is a fluctuation-dissipation theorem applicable arbitrarily far from equilibrium, that captures the effect of non-local and time-dependent behavior from transient driving forces. Based on this work, it is clear that statistical mechanics is a general tool for constructing the relationships between constraints on system information.

  • 3 authors
·
May 27, 2011

S3IM: Stochastic Structural SIMilarity and Its Unreasonable Effectiveness for Neural Fields

Recently, Neural Radiance Field (NeRF) has shown great success in rendering novel-view images of a given scene by learning an implicit representation with only posed RGB images. NeRF and relevant neural field methods (e.g., neural surface representation) typically optimize a point-wise loss and make point-wise predictions, where one data point corresponds to one pixel. Unfortunately, this line of research failed to use the collective supervision of distant pixels, although it is known that pixels in an image or scene can provide rich structural information. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to design a nonlocal multiplex training paradigm for NeRF and relevant neural field methods via a novel Stochastic Structural SIMilarity (S3IM) loss that processes multiple data points as a whole set instead of process multiple inputs independently. Our extensive experiments demonstrate the unreasonable effectiveness of S3IM in improving NeRF and neural surface representation for nearly free. The improvements of quality metrics can be particularly significant for those relatively difficult tasks: e.g., the test MSE loss unexpectedly drops by more than 90% for TensoRF and DVGO over eight novel view synthesis tasks; a 198% F-score gain and a 64% Chamfer L_{1} distance reduction for NeuS over eight surface reconstruction tasks. Moreover, S3IM is consistently robust even with sparse inputs, corrupted images, and dynamic scenes.

  • 8 authors
·
Aug 14, 2023

Programmable Heisenberg interactions between Floquet qubits

The fundamental trade-off between robustness and tunability is a central challenge in the pursuit of quantum simulation and fault-tolerant quantum computation. In particular, many emerging quantum architectures are designed to achieve high coherence at the expense of having fixed spectra and consequently limited types of controllable interactions. Here, by adiabatically transforming fixed-frequency superconducting circuits into modifiable Floquet qubits, we demonstrate an XXZ Heisenberg interaction with fully adjustable anisotropy. This interaction model is on one hand the basis for many-body quantum simulation of spin systems, and on the other hand the primitive for an expressive quantum gate set. To illustrate the robustness and versatility of our Floquet protocol, we tailor the Heisenberg Hamiltonian and implement two-qubit iSWAP, CZ, and SWAP gates with estimated fidelities of 99.32(3)%, 99.72(2)%, and 98.93(5)%, respectively. In addition, we implement a Heisenberg interaction between higher energy levels and employ it to construct a three-qubit CCZ gate with a fidelity of 96.18(5)%. Importantly, the protocol is applicable to various fixed-frequency high-coherence platforms, thereby unlocking a suite of essential interactions for high-performance quantum information processing. From a broader perspective, our work provides compelling avenues for future exploration of quantum electrodynamics and optimal control using the Floquet framework.

  • 12 authors
·
Nov 18, 2022

Markov length can diverge in systems whose universal physics is spatially Markovian

Conditional mutual information (CMI) probes spatial non-Markovianity and plays a central role in a recently developed framework for defining mixed-state phases based on local reversibility. This framework sharply distinguishes exponentially decaying from algebraically decaying CMI, since the latter obstructs equivalence to a state with finite Markov length. Here we show that states that flow to the same renormalization-group (RG) fixed point can nevertheless exhibit qualitatively different CMI. Starting from a critical Gibbs state of a finite-range local classical Hamiltonian, whose CMI vanishes beyond the interaction range, we show that an RG-irrelevant perturbation that breaks detailed balance generically generates algebraically decaying CMI. Crucially, these power-law tails are cutoff-suppressed: although they lead to an infinite Markov length at every fixed lattice cutoff, they vanish as a positive power of the cutoff in the continuum limit. We construct solvable models that exhibit this phenomenon and predict that the Ising-symmetric critical point of Toom's cellular automata generically exhibits such behavior. We also find analogous cutoff-suppressed CMI in the high-temperature paramagnetic phase of the long-range Ising paramagnet, in contrast with the genuine power-law CMI at the finite-temperature critical point in this same model that survives the continuum limit. We also derive a general result that in one spatial dimension, CMI decays faster than the inverse square of the buffer length if and only if the long-distance physics is Markovian.

  • 2 authors
·
Oct 7

MoReact: Generating Reactive Motion from Textual Descriptions

Modeling and generating human reactions poses a significant challenge with broad applications for computer vision and human-computer interaction. Existing methods either treat multiple individuals as a single entity, directly generating interactions, or rely solely on one person's motion to generate the other's reaction, failing to integrate the rich semantic information that underpins human interactions. Yet, these methods often fall short in adaptive responsiveness, i.e., the ability to accurately respond to diverse and dynamic interaction scenarios. Recognizing this gap, our work introduces an approach tailored to address the limitations of existing models by focusing on text-driven human reaction generation. Our model specifically generates realistic motion sequences for individuals that responding to the other's actions based on a descriptive text of the interaction scenario. The goal is to produce motion sequences that not only complement the opponent's movements but also semantically fit the described interactions. To achieve this, we present MoReact, a diffusion-based method designed to disentangle the generation of global trajectories and local motions sequentially. This approach stems from the observation that generating global trajectories first is crucial for guiding local motion, ensuring better alignment with given action and text. Furthermore, we introduce a novel interaction loss to enhance the realism of generated close interactions. Our experiments, utilizing data adapted from a two-person motion dataset, demonstrate the efficacy of our approach for this novel task, which is capable of producing realistic, diverse, and controllable reactions that not only closely match the movements of the counterpart but also adhere to the textual guidance. Please find our webpage at https://xiyan-xu.github.io/MoReactWebPage.

  • 4 authors
·
Sep 28, 2025

Rise and Fall of Anderson Localization by Lattice Vibrations: A Time-Dependent Machine Learning Approach

The intricate relationship between electrons and the crystal lattice is a linchpin in condensed matter, traditionally described by the Fr\"ohlich model encompassing the lowest-order lattice-electron coupling. Recently developed quantum acoustics, emphasizing the wave nature of lattice vibrations, has enabled the exploration of previously uncharted territories of electron-lattice interaction not accessible with conventional tools such as perturbation theory. In this context, our agenda here is two-fold. First, we showcase the application of machine learning methods to categorize various interaction regimes within the subtle interplay of electrons and the dynamical lattice landscape. Second, we shed light on a nebulous region of electron dynamics identified by the machine learning approach and then attribute it to transient localization, where strong lattice vibrations result in a momentary Anderson prison for electronic wavepackets, which are later released by the evolution of the lattice. Overall, our research illuminates the spectrum of dynamics within the Fr\"ohlich model, such as transient localization, which has been suggested as a pivotal factor contributing to the mysteries surrounding strange metals. Furthermore, this paves the way for utilizing time-dependent perspectives in machine learning techniques for designing materials with tailored electron-lattice properties.

  • 4 authors
·
May 27, 2024

One-hot Generalized Linear Model for Switching Brain State Discovery

Exposing meaningful and interpretable neural interactions is critical to understanding neural circuits. Inferred neural interactions from neural signals primarily reflect functional interactions. In a long experiment, subject animals may experience different stages defined by the experiment, stimuli, or behavioral states, and hence functional interactions can change over time. To model dynamically changing functional interactions, prior work employs state-switching generalized linear models with hidden Markov models (i.e., HMM-GLMs). However, we argue they lack biological plausibility, as functional interactions are shaped and confined by the underlying anatomical connectome. Here, we propose a novel prior-informed state-switching GLM. We introduce both a Gaussian prior and a one-hot prior over the GLM in each state. The priors are learnable. We will show that the learned prior should capture the state-constant interaction, shedding light on the underlying anatomical connectome and revealing more likely physical neuron interactions. The state-dependent interaction modeled by each GLM offers traceability to capture functional variations across multiple brain states. Our methods effectively recover true interaction structures in simulated data, achieve the highest predictive likelihood with real neural datasets, and render interaction structures and hidden states more interpretable when applied to real neural data.

  • 5 authors
·
Oct 23, 2023

Simplicial Closure and higher-order link prediction

Networks provide a powerful formalism for modeling complex systems by using a model of pairwise interactions. But much of the structure within these systems involves interactions that take place among more than two nodes at once; for example, communication within a group rather than person-to person, collaboration among a team rather than a pair of coauthors, or biological interaction between a set of molecules rather than just two. Such higher-order interactions are ubiquitous, but their empirical study has received limited attention, and little is known about possible organizational principles of such structures. Here we study the temporal evolution of 19 datasets with explicit accounting for higher-order interactions. We show that there is a rich variety of structure in our datasets but datasets from the same system types have consistent patterns of higher-order structure. Furthermore, we find that tie strength and edge density are competing positive indicators of higher-order organization, and these trends are consistent across interactions involving differing numbers of nodes. To systematically further the study of theories for such higher-order structures, we propose higher-order link prediction as a benchmark problem to assess models and algorithms that predict higher-order structure. We find a fundamental differences from traditional pairwise link prediction, with a greater role for local rather than long-range information in predicting the appearance of new interactions.

  • 5 authors
·
Feb 19, 2018

InterAnimate: Taming Region-aware Diffusion Model for Realistic Human Interaction Animation

Recent video generation research has focused heavily on isolated actions, leaving interactive motions-such as hand-face interactions-largely unexamined. These interactions are essential for emerging biometric authentication systems, which rely on interactive motion-based anti-spoofing approaches. From a security perspective, there is a growing need for large-scale, high-quality interactive videos to train and strengthen authentication models. In this work, we introduce a novel paradigm for animating realistic hand-face interactions. Our approach simultaneously learns spatio-temporal contact dynamics and biomechanically plausible deformation effects, enabling natural interactions where hand movements induce anatomically accurate facial deformations while maintaining collision-free contact. To facilitate this research, we present InterHF, a large-scale hand-face interaction dataset featuring 18 interaction patterns and 90,000 annotated videos. Additionally, we propose InterAnimate, a region-aware diffusion model designed specifically for interaction animation. InterAnimate leverages learnable spatial and temporal latents to effectively capture dynamic interaction priors and integrates a region-aware interaction mechanism that injects these priors into the denoising process. To the best of our knowledge, this work represents the first large-scale effort to systematically study human hand-face interactions. Qualitative and quantitative results show InterAnimate produces highly realistic animations, setting a new benchmark. Code and data will be made public to advance research.

  • 13 authors
·
Apr 15, 2025

Teleportation of entanglement over 143 km

As a direct consequence of the no-cloning theorem, the deterministic amplification as in classical communication is impossible for quantum states. This calls for more advanced techniques in a future global quantum network, e.g. for cloud quantum computing. A unique solution is the teleportation of an entangled state, i.e. entanglement swapping, representing the central resource to relay entanglement between distant nodes. Together with entanglement purification and a quantum memory it constitutes a so-called quantum repeater. Since the aforementioned building blocks have been individually demonstrated in laboratory setups only, the applicability of the required technology in real-world scenarios remained to be proven. Here we present a free-space entanglement-swapping experiment between the Canary Islands of La Palma and Tenerife, verifying the presence of quantum entanglement between two previously independent photons separated by 143 km. We obtained an expectation value for the entanglement-witness operator, more than 6 standard deviations beyond the classical limit. By consecutive generation of the two required photon pairs and space-like separation of the relevant measurement events, we also showed the feasibility of the swapping protocol in a long-distance scenario, where the independence of the nodes is highly demanded. Since our results already allow for efficient implementation of entanglement purification, we anticipate our assay to lay the ground for a fully-fledged quantum repeater over a realistic high-loss and even turbulent quantum channel.

  • 7 authors
·
Feb 28, 2014

Nonverbal Interaction Detection

This work addresses a new challenge of understanding human nonverbal interaction in social contexts. Nonverbal signals pervade virtually every communicative act. Our gestures, facial expressions, postures, gaze, even physical appearance all convey messages, without anything being said. Despite their critical role in social life, nonverbal signals receive very limited attention as compared to the linguistic counterparts, and existing solutions typically examine nonverbal cues in isolation. Our study marks the first systematic effort to enhance the interpretation of multifaceted nonverbal signals. First, we contribute a novel large-scale dataset, called NVI, which is meticulously annotated to include bounding boxes for humans and corresponding social groups, along with 22 atomic-level nonverbal behaviors under five broad interaction types. Second, we establish a new task NVI-DET for nonverbal interaction detection, which is formalized as identifying triplets in the form <individual, group, interaction> from images. Third, we propose a nonverbal interaction detection hypergraph (NVI-DEHR), a new approach that explicitly models high-order nonverbal interactions using hypergraphs. Central to the model is a dual multi-scale hypergraph that adeptly addresses individual-to-individual and group-to-group correlations across varying scales, facilitating interactional feature learning and eventually improving interaction prediction. Extensive experiments on NVI show that NVI-DEHR improves various baselines significantly in NVI-DET. It also exhibits leading performance on HOI-DET, confirming its versatility in supporting related tasks and strong generalization ability. We hope that our study will offer the community new avenues to explore nonverbal signals in more depth.

  • 4 authors
·
Jul 10, 2024

Artificial Entanglement in the Fine-Tuning of Large Language Models

Large language models (LLMs) can be adapted to new tasks using parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) methods that modify only a small number of trainable parameters, often through low-rank updates. In this work, we adopt a quantum-information-inspired perspective to understand their effectiveness. From this perspective, low-rank parameterizations naturally correspond to low-dimensional Matrix Product States (MPS) representations, which enable entanglement-based characterizations of parameter structure. Thereby, we term and measure "Artificial Entanglement", defined as the entanglement entropy of the parameters in artificial neural networks (in particular the LLMs). We first study the representative low-rank adaptation (LoRA) PEFT method, alongside full fine-tuning (FFT), using LLaMA models at the 1B and 8B scales trained on the Tulu3 and OpenThoughts3 datasets, and uncover: (i) Internal artificial entanglement in the updates of query and value projection matrices in LoRA follows a volume law with a central suppression (termed as the "Entanglement Valley"), which is sensitive to hyper-parameters and is distinct from that in FFT; (ii) External artificial entanglement in attention matrices, corresponding to token-token correlations in representation space, follows an area law with logarithmic corrections and remains robust to LoRA hyper-parameters and training steps. Drawing a parallel to the No-Hair Theorem in black hole physics, we propose that although LoRA and FFT induce distinct internal entanglement signatures, such differences do not manifest in the attention outputs, suggesting a "no-hair" property that results in the effectiveness of low rank updates. We further provide theoretical support based on random matrix theory, and extend our analysis to an MPS Adaptation PEFT method, which exhibits qualitatively similar behaviors.

  • 6 authors
·
Jan 11 2

Ionization waves (striations) in low-current DC discharges in noble gases obtained with a hybrid kinetic-fluid model

A hybrid kinetic-fluid model is used to study ionization waves (striations) in a low-current plasma column of DC discharges in noble gases. Coupled solutions of a kinetic equation for electrons, a drift-diffusion equation of ions, and a Poisson equation for the electric field are obtained to clarify the nature of plasma stratification in the positive column and near-electrode effects. A simplified two-level excitation-ionization model is used for the conditions when the nonlinear effects due to stepwise ionization, gas heating, and Coulomb interactions among electrons are negligible. It is confirmed that the nonlocal effects are responsible for the formation of moving striations in DC discharges at low plasma densities. The calculated properties of self-excited waves of S, P, and R types in Neon and S type in Argon agree with available experimental data. The reason for Helium plasma stability to stratification is clarified. It is shown that sustaining stratified plasma is more efficient than striation-free plasma when the ionization rate is a nonlinear function of the electric field. However, the nonlinear dependence of the ionization rate on the electric field is not required for plasma stratification. Striations of S, P, and R types in Neon exist with minimal or no ionization enhancement. Effects of the column length on the wave properties have been demonstrated in our simulations.

  • 2 authors
·
Dec 10, 2022

Superpositions of thermalisations in relativistic quantum field theory

Recent results in relativistic quantum information and quantum thermodynamics have independently shown that in the quantum regime, a system may fail to thermalise when subject to quantum-controlled application of the same, single thermalisation channel. For example, an accelerating system with fixed proper acceleration is known to thermalise to an acceleration-dependent temperature, known as the Unruh temperature. However, the same system in a superposition of spatially translated trajectories that share the same proper acceleration fails to thermalise. Here, we provide an explanation of these results using the framework of quantum field theory in relativistic noninertial reference frames. We show how a probe that accelerates in a superposition of spatial translations interacts with incommensurate sets of field modes. In special cases where the modes are orthogonal (for example, when the Rindler wedges are translated in a direction orthogonal to the plane of motion), thermalisation does indeed result, corroborating the here provided explanation. We then discuss how this description relates to an information-theoretic approach aimed at studying quantum aspects of temperature through quantum-controlled thermalisations. The present work draws a connection between research in quantum information, relativistic physics, and quantum thermodynamics, in particular showing that relativistic quantum effects can provide a natural realisation of quantum thermodynamical scenarios.

  • 2 authors
·
Jul 5, 2023

Canonical Cortical Field Theories

We characterise the dynamics of neuronal activity, in terms of field theory, using neural units placed on a 2D-lattice modelling the cortical surface. The electrical activity of neuronal units was analysed with the aim of deriving a neural field model with a simple functional form that still able to predict or reproduce empirical findings. Each neural unit was modelled using a neural mass and the accompanying field theory was derived in the continuum limit. The field theory comprised coupled (real) Klein-Gordon fields, where predictions of the model fall within the range of experimental findings. These predictions included the frequency spectrum of electric activity measured from the cortex, which was derived using an equipartition of energy over eigenfunctions of the neural fields. Moreover, the neural field model was invariant, within a set of parameters, to the dynamical system used to model each neuronal mass. Specifically, topologically equivalent dynamical systems resulted in the same neural field model when connected in a lattice; indicating that the fields derived could be read as a canonical cortical field theory. We specifically investigated non-dispersive fields that provide a structure for the coding (or representation) of afferent information. Further elaboration of the ensuing neural field theory, including the effect of dispersive forces, could be of importance in the understanding of the cortical processing of information.

  • 3 authors
·
Aug 20, 2023

Resonance expansions and local-energy decay estimates for Dirac operators

We study resonance expansions and localised long-time dynamics for three-dimensional semiclassical Dirac operators. For smooth Hermitian matrix-valued perturbations which are analytic outside a compact set, we first obtain exponential cut-off resolvent bounds away from the resonance set and polynomial bounds in thin resonance-free rectangles adjacent to the real axis. Combining these estimates with a local Oc(h^{-3}) upper bound on the number of resonances, a pigeonhole selection of admissible contours, almost-analytic functional calculus, and a Cauchy--Green deformation, we derive resonance expansions for spectrally localised propagators. Positive-energy resonances contribute for large positive times, whereas negative-energy resonances contribute for large negative times. We then specialise to mass-type perturbations mbfβV(x) in a nontrapping energy window. Using the logarithmic resonance-free region established in our earlier work together with a quantitative FBI-transform/escape-function argument, we obtain a polynomial bound for the continued cut-off resolvent and deduce rapid local-energy decay. We subsequently refine this polynomial estimate by a finite-time propagation argument in the undistorted region. Introducing the maximal positive-sheet connection time T_χ associated with the spatial cutoff, we prove a geometric continued-resolvent estimate and, for every fixed M below the resonance-free depth constant, derive the explicit local-energy decay threshold T_N>T_χ+(N+1)/M. The same analysis gives a rigorous microlocal obstruction to a uniform [hlog(1/h)]^{-1} bound for the full distorted resolvent and identifies a finite-flight-time amplification mechanism for the sandwiched continued resolvent at logarithmic depth.

  • 2 authors
·
Sep 30

The Local Interaction Basis: Identifying Computationally-Relevant and Sparsely Interacting Features in Neural Networks

Mechanistic interpretability aims to understand the behavior of neural networks by reverse-engineering their internal computations. However, current methods struggle to find clear interpretations of neural network activations because a decomposition of activations into computational features is missing. Individual neurons or model components do not cleanly correspond to distinct features or functions. We present a novel interpretability method that aims to overcome this limitation by transforming the activations of the network into a new basis - the Local Interaction Basis (LIB). LIB aims to identify computational features by removing irrelevant activations and interactions. Our method drops irrelevant activation directions and aligns the basis with the singular vectors of the Jacobian matrix between adjacent layers. It also scales features based on their importance for downstream computation, producing an interaction graph that shows all computationally-relevant features and interactions in a model. We evaluate the effectiveness of LIB on modular addition and CIFAR-10 models, finding that it identifies more computationally-relevant features that interact more sparsely, compared to principal component analysis. However, LIB does not yield substantial improvements in interpretability or interaction sparsity when applied to language models. We conclude that LIB is a promising theory-driven approach for analyzing neural networks, but in its current form is not applicable to large language models.

  • 10 authors
·
May 17, 2024

Limits on the accuracy of contact inhibition of locomotion

Cells that collide with each other repolarize away from contact, in a process called contact inhibition of locomotion (CIL), which is necessary for correct development of the embryo. CIL can occur even when cells make a micron-scale contact with a neighbor - much smaller than their size. How precisely can a cell sense cell-cell contact and repolarize in the correct direction? What factors control whether a cell recognizes it has contacted a neighbor? We propose a theoretical model for the limits of CIL where cells recognize the presence of another cell by binding the protein ephrin with the Eph receptor. This recognition is made difficult by the presence of interfering ligands that bind nonspecifically. Both theoretical predictions and simulation results show that it becomes more difficult to sense cell-cell contact when it is difficult to distinguish ephrin from the interfering ligands, or when there are more interfering ligands, or when the contact width decreases. However, the error of estimating contact position remains almost constant when the contact width changes. This happens because the cell gains spatial information largely from the boundaries of cell-cell contact. We study using statistical decision theory the likelihood of a false positive CIL event in the absence of cell-cell contact, and the likelihood of a false negative where CIL does not occur when another cell is present. Our results suggest that the cell is more likely to make incorrect decisions when the contact width is very small or so large that it nears the cell's perimeter. However, in general, we find that cells have the ability to make reasonably reliable CIL decisions even for very narrow (micron-scale) contacts, even if the concentration of interfering ligands is ten times that of the correct ligands.

  • 2 authors
·
Oct 31, 2023

The probabilistic world

Physics is based on probabilities as fundamental entities of a mathematical description. Expectation values of observables are computed according to the classical statistical rule. The overall probability distribution for one world covers all times. The quantum formalism arises once one focuses on the evolution of the time-local probabilistic information. Wave functions or the density matrix allow the formulation of a general linear evolution law for classical statistics. The quantum formalism for classical statistics is a powerful tool which allows us to implement for generalized Ising models the momentum observable with the associated Fourier representation. The association of operators to observables permits the computation of expectation values in terms of the density matrix by the usual quantum rule. We show that probabilistic cellular automata are quantum systems in a formulation with discrete time steps and real wave functions. With a complex structure the evolution operator for automata can be expressed in terms of a Hamiltonian involving fermionic creation and annihilation operators. The time-local probabilistic information amounts to a subsystem of the overall probabilistic system which is correlated with its environment consisting of the past and future. Such subsystems typically involve probabilistic observables for which only a probability distribution for their possible measurement values is available. Incomplete statistics does not permit to compute classical correlation functions for arbitrary subsystem-observables. Bell's inequalities are not generally applicable.

  • 1 authors
·
Nov 4, 2020

Foundations for Near-Term Quantum Natural Language Processing

We provide conceptual and mathematical foundations for near-term quantum natural language processing (QNLP), and do so in quantum computer scientist friendly terms. We opted for an expository presentation style, and provide references for supporting empirical evidence and formal statements concerning mathematical generality. We recall how the quantum model for natural language that we employ canonically combines linguistic meanings with rich linguistic structure, most notably grammar. In particular, the fact that it takes a quantum-like model to combine meaning and structure, establishes QNLP as quantum-native, on par with simulation of quantum systems. Moreover, the now leading Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) paradigm for encoding classical data on quantum hardware, variational quantum circuits, makes NISQ exceptionally QNLP-friendly: linguistic structure can be encoded as a free lunch, in contrast to the apparently exponentially expensive classical encoding of grammar. Quantum speed-up for QNLP tasks has already been established in previous work with Will Zeng. Here we provide a broader range of tasks which all enjoy the same advantage. Diagrammatic reasoning is at the heart of QNLP. Firstly, the quantum model interprets language as quantum processes via the diagrammatic formalism of categorical quantum mechanics. Secondly, these diagrams are via ZX-calculus translated into quantum circuits. Parameterisations of meanings then become the circuit variables to be learned. Our encoding of linguistic structure within quantum circuits also embodies a novel approach for establishing word-meanings that goes beyond the current standards in mainstream AI, by placing linguistic structure at the heart of Wittgenstein's meaning-is-context.

  • 4 authors
·
Dec 7, 2020

Trimming the Long-Tail of Visual World Modeling Evaluation

Physical interactions follow a long-tailed distribution: a set of common and regular interactions dominates human experience and visual data, while a broad spectrum of rare and irregular interactions remains underrepresented. Although recent visual world models, including image and video generation models, achieve impressive realism on existing benchmarks, they primarily focus on simulating common physical interactions. This raises a central question: Do current visual world models internalize and generalize physical principles? In this work, we introduce Tailor-Bench, a benchmark that challenges world models to simulate irregular physical interactions. To enable systematic evaluation, we design three scenario modes that progressively challenge model reasoning: Regular scenarios reflect common tool-task pairs, Unconventional scenarios replace conventional tools with attribute-compatible substitutes to test affordance generalization, and Impossible scenarios introduce attribute-violating tools to probe constraint awareness. Additionally, we design two complementary settings under a unified evaluation protocol: predictive generation requires inferring outcomes without guidance, while descriptive generation specifies the target outcome for faithful realization. Our experimental results reveal a clear long-tail gap in physical world modeling: performance degrades from Regular to Unconventional and Impossible scenarios, indicating limited generalization beyond common interactions. Failure analysis further shows that models rely on superficial visual patterns: image models fail to realize correct state changes, while video models further suffer from temporal inconsistencies.

Multi-marginal Schrödinger Bridges with Iterative Reference Refinement

Practitioners frequently aim to infer an unobserved population trajectory using sample snapshots at multiple time points. For instance, in single-cell sequencing, scientists would like to learn how gene expression evolves over time. But sequencing any cell destroys that cell. So we cannot access any cell's full trajectory, but we can access snapshot samples from many cells. Stochastic differential equations are commonly used to analyze systems with full individual-trajectory access; since here we have only sample snapshots, these methods are inapplicable. The deep learning community has recently explored using Schr\"odinger bridges (SBs) and their extensions to estimate these dynamics. However, these methods either (1) interpolate between just two time points or (2) require a single fixed reference dynamic within the SB, which is often just set to be Brownian motion. But learning piecewise from adjacent time points can fail to capture long-term dependencies. And practitioners are typically able to specify a model class for the reference dynamic but not the exact values of the parameters within it. So we propose a new method that (1) learns the unobserved trajectories from sample snapshots across multiple time points and (2) requires specification only of a class of reference dynamics, not a single fixed one. In particular, we suggest an iterative projection method inspired by Schr\"odinger bridges; we alternate between learning a piecewise SB on the unobserved trajectories and using the learned SB to refine our best guess for the dynamics within the reference class. We demonstrate the advantages of our method via a well-known simulated parametric model from ecology, simulated and real data from systems biology, and real motion-capture data.

  • 3 authors
·
Aug 12, 2024