Unconstrained Region Research Articles

An unconstrained palmprint region of interest extraction method based on lightweight networks.

Accurately extracting the Region of Interest (ROI) of a palm print was crucial for subsequent palm print recognition. However, under unconstrained environmental conditions, the user's palm posture and angle, as well as the background and lighting of the environment, were not controlled, making the extraction of the ROI of palm print a major challenge. In existing research methods, traditional ROI extraction methods relied on image segmentation and were difficult to apply to multiple datasets simultaneously under the aforementioned interference. However, deep learning-based methods typically did not consider the computational cost of the model and were difficult to apply to embedded devices. This article proposed a palm print ROI extraction method based on lightweight networks. Firstly, the YOLOv5-lite network was used to detect and preliminarily locate the palm, in order to eliminate most of the interference from complex backgrounds. Then, an improved UNet was used for keypoints detection. This network model reduced the number of parameters compared to the original UNet model, improved network performance, and accelerated network convergence. The output of this model combined Gaussian heatmap regression and direct regression and proposed a joint loss function based on JS loss and L2 loss for supervision. During the experiment, a mixed database consisting of 5 databases was used to meet the needs of practical applications. The results showed that the proposed method achieved an accuracy of 98.3% on the database, with an average detection time of only 28ms on the GPU, which was superior to other mainstream lightweight networks, and the model size was only 831k. In the open-set test, with a success rate of 93.4%, an average detection time of 5.95ms on the GPU, it was far ahead of the latest palm print ROI extraction algorithm and could be applied in practice.

An Analytical Method for Elastic Modulus of the Sandwich BCC Lattice Structure Based on Assumption of Linear Distribution.

An analytical method to predict the elastic modulus of the sandwich body-centered cubic (BCC) lattice structure is presented on the basis of the assumption of a linearly changing elastic modulus. In the constrained region, the maximum of elastic modulus used the elastic moduli of the BCC lattice element with plate constraints and is calculated with Timoshenko beam theory, the minimum used without plate constraints. In the rest of the constrained region, a linear function along the thickness direction is proposed to calculate elastic modulus. The elastic modulus of the unconstrained region is constant and it is the same as the minimum of the constrained region. The elastic modulus of the whole sandwich BCC lattice structure can be calculated theoretically with the elastic modulus of the constrained and unconstrained regions and a single-layer slice integration method. Six kinds of sandwich BCC lattice structures with different geometric parameters are designed and made by resin 3D printing technology, and the elastic moduli are measured. By comparing the predictions of the elastic modulus using the proposed analytical method and existing method with experimental results, the errors between the results of the existing method and the experimental results varied from 10.3% to 24.7%, and the errors between the results of the proposed method and the experimental results varied from 1.6% to 7.4%, proving that the proposed method is more accurate than the existing methods.

Heavy Flavor Physics at the EIC with the ECCE detector

The proposed Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) will operate high-energy high-luminosity electron+proton and electron+nucleus collisions to solve several unresolved fundamental questions. Due to their large masses (mc,b > ΛQCD), heavy quarks and their hadron products are ideal probes to study the nucleon/nuclear parton distribution functions in the high Bjorken-x (xBJ > 0.1) region and explore the hadronization process within the unconstrained kinematic region. Recently, the Electron-Ion Collider Comprehensive Chromodynamics Experiment (ECCE) consortium detector conceptual design has been selected as the reference design for the EIC project detector. The precise momentum and spatial resolutions provided by the ECCE tracking detector enable a series of open heavy flavor and quarkonia measurements. The physics projections of these proposed heavy flavor measurements in simulation studies using the ECCE detector design will be presented.

Model-based three-material decomposition in dual-energy CT using the volume conservation constraint

Objective. We develop a model-based optimization algorithm for ‘one-step’ dual-energy (DE) CT decomposition of three materials directly from projection measurements. Approach. Since the three-material problem is inherently undetermined, we incorporate the volume conservation principle (VCP) as a pair of equality and nonnegativity constraints into the objective function of the recently reported model-based material decomposition (MBMD). An optimization algorithm (constrained MBMD, CMBMD) is derived that utilizes voxel-wise separability to partition the volume into a VCP-constrained region solved using interior-point iterations, and an unconstrained region (air surrounding the object, where VCP is violated) solved with conventional two-material MBMD. Constrained MBMD (CMBMD) is validated in simulations and experiments in application to bone composition measurements in the presence of metal hardware using DE cone-beam CT (CBCT). A kV-switching protocol with non-coinciding low- and high-energy (LE and HE) projections was assumed. CMBMD with decomposed base materials of cortical bone, fat, and metal (titanium, Ti) is compared to MBMD with (i) fat-bone and (ii) fat-Ti bases. Main results. Three-material CMBMD exhibits a substantial reduction in metal artifacts relative to the two-material MBMD implementations. The accuracies of cortical bone volume fraction estimates are markedly improved using CMBMD, with ∼5–10× lower normalized root mean squared error in simulations with anthropomorphic knee phantoms (depending on the complexity of the metal component) and ∼2–2.5× lower in an experimental test-bench study. Significance. In conclusion, we demonstrated one-step three-material decomposition of DE CT using volume conservation as an optimization constraint. The proposed method might be applicable to DE applications such as bone marrow edema imaging (fat-bone-water decomposition) or multi-contrast imaging, especially on CT/CBCT systems that do not provide coinciding LE and HE ray paths required for conventional projection-domain DE decomposition.

Signals of primordial black holes at gravitational wave interferometers

Primordial black holes (PBHs) can form as a result of primordial scalar perturbations at small scales. This PBH formation scenario has associated gravitational wave (GW) signatures from second-order GWs induced by the primordial curvature perturbation, and from GWs produced during an early PBH dominated era. We investigate the ability of next generation GW experiments, including BBO, LISA, and CE, to probe this PBH formation scenario in a wide mass range. Measuring the stochastic GW background with GW observatories can constrain the allowed parameter space of PBHs for masses ${10}^{9}--{10}^{27}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{g}$. We also discuss possible GW sources from an unconstrained region where light PBHs ($<{10}^{9}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{g}$) temporarily dominate the energy density of the universe before evaporating. We show how PBH formation impacts the reach of GW observatories to the primordial power spectrum and provide constraints implied by existing PBH bounds.

Constraining axion-like particles using the white dwarf initial-final mass relation

Axion-like particles (ALPs), a class of pseudoscalars common to many extensions of the Standard Model, have the capacity to drain energy from the interiors of stars. Consequently, stellar evolution can be used to derive many constraints on ALPs. We study the influence that keV-MeV scale ALPs which interact exclusively with photons can exert on the helium-burning shells of asymptotic giant branch stars, the late-life evolutionary phase of stars with initial masses less than 8M ☉. We establish the sensitivity of the final stellar mass to such energy-loss for ALPs with masses currently permitted by stellar evolution bounds. A semi-empirical constraint on the white dwarf initial-final mass relation (IFMR) derived from observation of double white dwarf binaries is then used to exclude part of a currently unconstrained region of ALP parameter space, the cosmological triangle. The derived constraint relaxes when the ALP decay length becomes shorter than the width of the helium-burning shell. Other potential sources for stellar constraints on ALPs are also discussed.

Solar gamma ray constraints on dark matter annihilation to secluded mediators

We consider the indirect detection of dark matter that is captured in the Sun and subsequently annihilates to long-lived dark mediators. If these mediators escape the Sun before decaying, they can produce striking gamma ray signals, either via the decay of the mediators directly to photons, or via bremsstrahlung and hadronization of the mediator decay products. Using recent measurements from the HAWC Observatory, we determine model-independent limits on heavy dark matter that are orders of magnitude more powerful than direct detection experiments, for both spin-dependent and spin-independent scattering. We also consider a well-motivated model in which fermionic dark matter annihilates to dark photons. For such a realistic scenario, the strength of the solar gamma ray constraints are reduced, compared to the idealistic case, because the dark matter capture cross section and mediator lifetime are related. Nonetheless, solar gamma ray constraints enable us to exclude a previously unconstrained region of dark photon parameter space.

First Germanium-Based Constraints on Sub-MeV Dark Matter with the EDELWEISS Experiment.

We present the first Ge-based constraints on sub-MeV/c^{2} dark matter (DM) particles interacting with electrons using a 33.4g Ge cryogenic detector with a 0.53 electron-hole pair (rms) resolution, operated underground at the Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane. Competitive constraints are set on the DM-electron scattering cross section, as well as on the kinetic mixing parameter of dark photons down to 1 eV/c^{2}. In particular, the most stringent limits are set for dark photon DM in the 6 to 9 eV/c^{2} range. These results demonstrate the high relevance of Ge cryogenic detectors for the search of DM-induced eV-scale electron signals.

Analytical study of the seismic performance of all-steel buckling-restrained braces with H-shaped cores

The seismic performance of an H-shaped core buckling-restrained brace (HBRB) is evaluated through detailed finite element analysis. The numerical model is validated against available experimental data and a parametric study is carried out to investigate the effect of influential parameters on the cyclic behavior and failure modes of HBRB. Several design parameters including the yielding length ratio, the constrained length, the presence of stiffeners and their thicknesses, the length of the transition region, and the gap size are considered in the parametric investigation. Based on the analysis results reducing the yielding length of HBRB increases its post-yield stiffness and the axial strain and stress of the H-section core. Since buckling of the unconstrained region was observed in HBRBs with insufficient stiffener thickness, an analytical method is proposed for evaluating the sufficiency of stiffeners by estimating the critical buckling load of HBRB as a three-segment stepped compression member.

Vehicle Logo Recognition Based on Enhanced Matching for Small Objects, Constrained Region and SSFPD Network.

Vehicle Logo Recognition (VLR) is an important part of vehicle behavior analysis and can provide supplementary information for vehicle identification, which is an essential research topic in robotic systems. However, the inaccurate extraction of vehicle logo candidate regions will affect the accuracy of logo recognition. Additionally, the existing methods have low recognition rate for most small vehicle logos and poor performance under complicated environments. A VLR method based on enhanced matching, constrained region extraction and SSFPD network is proposed in this paper to solve the aforementioned problems. A constrained region extraction method based on segmentation of the car head and car tail is proposed to accurately extract the candidate region of logo. An enhanced matching method is proposed to improve the detection performance of small objects, which augment each of training images by copy-pasting small objects many times in the unconstrained region. A single deep neural network based on a reduced ResNeXt model and Feature Pyramid Networks is proposed in this paper, which is named as Single Shot Feature Pyramid Detector (SSFPD). The SSFPD uses the reduced ResNeXt to improve classification performance of the network and retain more detailed information for small-sized vehicle logo detection. Additionally, it uses the Feature Pyramid Networks module to bring in more semantic context information to build several high-level semantic feature maps, which effectively improves recognition performance. Extensive evaluations have been made on self-collected and public vehicle logo datasets. The proposed method achieved 93.79% accuracy on the Common Vehicle Logos Dataset and 99.52% accuracy on another public dataset, respectively, outperforming the existing methods.

Constraints on superconducting cosmic strings from the global 21-cm signal before reionization

Electromagnetic radiation from the cusp region of superconducting cosmic strings leads to a radio excess in the photon spectrum in the early universe and can produce a deep absorption feature in the global 21 cm signal before the epoch of reionization. We study the constraints on the parameter space of superconducting strings which can be derived by demanding that the absorption feature is not larger in amplitude than what has recently been reported by the EDGES collaboration. We find a previously unconstrained region of high current, low tension strings would produce too strong of an absorption feature, and are thus ruled out by non-detection.

Thermo-Mechanical Stress Simulation of Unconstrained Region of Straight X20 Steam Pipe

Abstract The thermo-mechanical stress, strain and temperature distribution across the thickness of X20 steam pipe at region less susceptible to thermo-mechanical failure was simulated using finite element analysis software, Abaqus. The mesh convergence studies conducted showed that 10 mm mesh size was suitable for the simulation. The temperature distribution profile across the thickness of Pyrogel showed that pyrogel is an excellent insulation jacket for steam pipes. The maximum stress value obtained from the simulation shows that the pipe is operating below the yield strength of X20 steel at the region under study. Hence, the pipe’s failure at this region due to thermo-mechanical stress or strain only is practically impossible over a long period of time. A deviation of 0.5% was found to exist between the analytical and simulated stress value obtained. This indicates a strong correlation between the simulated and analytical stress results.

Rotationally Unconstrained Region Proposals for Ship Target Segmentation in Optical Remote Sensing

The segmentation of ship targets in remote sensing images is of great importance in both military and civil fields. The existing methods often suffer from a low overlap between region proposals, which are constrained to be the horizontal rectangles and the ground truth. This enhances the problems of background noise and results in more false positives and a lower recall. Hence, we propose a method to generate the rotated bounding boxes that are more appropriate for ship segmentation. The proposed method is based on the Mask R-CNN framework, and the key contribution lies in the approach to predefine the rotated bounding boxes and generate the rotationally unconstrained region proposals. Specifically, for a double-stage proposal generation, a multiangle region proposal layer is designed; following this, an adapted alignment approach is proposed to extract the features for each proposal. In addition to the above-mentioned two proposed methods, we adopt a second stage to refine the proposals with rotation regression and mask prediction. We evaluated the proposed method using a remote sensing dataset with extensively labeled ship targets, and the experimental results show that the proposed method performs better than its competitors. The proposed method significantly increases the recall of densely arranged ships while substantially reducing the number of false positives.

Constraints on MeV dark matter using neutrino detectors and their implication for the 21-cm results

The recent results of the EDGES collaboration indicate that during the era of reionization, the primordial gas was much colder than expected. The cooling of the gas could be explained by interactions between dark matter (DM) and particles in the primordial gas. Constraints from cosmology and particle experiments indicate that this DM should be light ($\sim$10-80 MeV), carry a small charge ($\epsilon\sim 10^{-6}$-$10^{-4}$), and only make up a small fraction of the total amount of DM. Several constraints on the DM parameter space have already been made. We explore the yet unconstrained region in the case that the milli-charged DM makes up for $\sim$2\% of the total dark matter, through the scenario in which this DM annihilates only into mu and tau neutrinos. We set upper limits on the annihilation cross section using the Super-Kamiokande data, and predict the limits that could be obtained through Hyper-Kamiokande, JUNO and DUNE. We find that data from Super-Kamiokande is not yet able to constrain this model, but future experiments might be. We furthermore explore DM annihilation into solely neutrinos in general, giving an update of the current limits, and predict the limits that could be placed with future experiments.

Optimization of Photonic Crystal Polarization Handling Devices Using Trust Region Algorithms

In this paper, the trust region optimization techniques are used for the design of photonic crystal polarization handling devices. The trust region algorithms are based on quadratic surrogate models with no derivative requirements to replace the objective function in the optimization process. A new box constrained trust region algorithm is employed for the first time to the best of our knowledge along with full vectorial finite difference methods to optimize a passive polarization rotator (PR) based on silica photonic crystal fiber (PCF). The reported PCF PR has a device length of 204 μm with nearly 100% polarization conversion ratio at operating wavelength λ of 1.55 μm. Further, an unconstrained trust region (UTR) algorithm is used for optimizing the coupling characteristics of a soft glass nematic liquid crystal (NLC) PCF coupler. The optimized coupler can separate the two polarized beams with compact length of 380 μm and low crosstalk at λ = 1.55 μm. Furthermore, a polarization independent NLC-PCF multiplexer–demultiplexer is proposed for wavelengths of 1.3 and 1.55 μm using the UTR technique with a compact device length of 475 μm and low crosstalk for the two polarization states.

Unconstrained Capacities of Quantum Key Distribution and Entanglement Distillation for Pure-Loss Bosonic Broadcast Channels.

We consider quantum key distribution (QKD) and entanglement distribution using a single-sender multiple-receiver pure-loss bosonic broadcast channel. We determine the unconstrained capacity region for the distillation of bipartite entanglement and secret key between the sender and each receiver, whenever they are allowed arbitrary public classical communication. A practical implication of our result is that the capacity region demonstrated drastically improves upon rates achievable using a naive time-sharing strategy, which has been employed in previously demonstrated network QKD systems. We show a simple example of a broadcast QKD protocol overcoming the limit of the point-to-point strategy. Our result is thus an important step toward opening a new framework of network channel-based quantum communication technology.

Detecting the Lμ−Lτ gauge boson at Belle II

We discuss the feasibility of detecting the gauge boson of the $U(1)_{L_{\mu}-L_{\tau}}$ symmetry, which possesses a mass in the range between MeV and GeV, at the Belle-II experiment. The kinetic mixing between the new gauge boson $Z'$ and photon is forbidden at the tree level and is radiatively induced. The leptonic force mediated by such a light boson is motivated by the discrepancy in muon anomalous magnetic moment and also the gap in the energy spectrum of cosmic neutrino. Defining the process $e^{+} e^{-} \rightarrow \gamma Z' \rightarrow \gamma \nu \bar{\nu}~(missing~energy)$ to be the signal, we estimate the numbers of the signal and the background events and show the parameter region to which the Belle-II experiment will be sensitive. The signal process in the $L_{\mu}-L_{\tau}$ model is enhanced with a light $Z'$, which is a characteristic feature differing from the dark photon models with a constant kinetic mixing. We find that the Belle-II experiment with the design luminosity will be sensitive to the $Z'$ with the mass $M_{Z'} \lesssim 1 $ GeV and the new gauge coupling $g_{Z'} \gtrsim 8\cdot 10^{-4}$, which covers a half of the unconstrained parameter region that explains the discrepancy in muon anomalous magnetic moment. The possibilities to improve the significance of the detection are also discussed.

Constraining scalar-tensor theories of gravity from the most massive neutron stars

Scalar-tensor~(ST) theories of gravity are natural phenomenological extensions to general relativity. Although these theories are severely constrained both by solar system experiments and by binary pulsar observations, a large set of ST families remain consistent with these observations. Recent work has suggested probing the unconstrained region of the parameter space of ST theories based on the stability properties of highly compact neutron stars. Here, the dynamical evolution of very compact stars in a fully nonlinear code demonstrates that the stars do become unstable and that the instability, in some cases, drives the stars to collapse. We discuss the implications of these results in light of recent observations of the most massive neutron star yet observed. In particular, such observations suggest that such a star would be subject to the instability for a certain regime; its existence therefore supports a bound on the ST parameter space.

Monojetlike Searches for Top Squarks with a b Tag.

The LHC searches for light compressed top squarks have resulted in considerable bounds in the case where the top squark decays to a neutralino and a charm quark. However, in the case where the top squark decays to a neutralino, a bottom quark, and two fermions via an off-shell W boson, there is currently a significant unconstrained region in the top-squark-neutralino mass plane, still allowing for top squark masses in the range 90-140 GeV. In this Letter we propose a new monojetlike search for light top squarks, optimized for the four-body decay mode, in which at least one b-tagged jet is required. We show that, by using the existing 8 TeV LHC data set, such a search would cover the entire unconstrained region. Moreover, in the process of validating our tools against an ATLAS monojet search, we show that the existing limit can be extended to exclude also top squark masses below 100 GeV.

Possibility of setting a new constraint to scalar-tensor theories

Scalar-tensor theories (STTs) are a widely studied alternative to general relativity (GR) in which gravity is endowed with an additional scalar degree of freedom. Although severely constrained by solar system and pulsar timing experiments, there remains a large set of STTs which are consistent with all present day observations. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of probing a yet unconstrained region of the parameter space of STTs based on the fact that stability properties of highly compact neutron stars in these theories may radically differ from those in GR.