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At least 145 records · Page 8

Degeneracy engineering for classical and quantum annealing: A case study of sparse linear regression in collider physics

Classical and quantum annealing are computing paradigms that have been proposed to solve a wide range of optimization problems. In this paper, we aim to enhance the performance of annealing algorithms by introducing the technique of degeneracy engineering, through which the relative degeneracy of the ground state is increased by modifying a subset of terms in the objective Hamiltonian. We illustrate this novel approach by applying it to the example of ℓ 0 -norm regularization for sparse linear regression, which is, in general, an NP-hard optimization problem. Specifically, we show how to cast ℓ 0 -norm regularization as a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problem, suitable for implementation on annealing platforms. As a case study, we apply this QUBO formulation to energy flow polynomials in high-energy collider physics, finding that degeneracy engineering substantially improves the annealing performance. Furthermore, our results motivate the application of degeneracy engineering to a variety of regularized optimization problems.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Statistical mechanical model for crack growth

Analytic relations that describe crack growth are vital for modeling experiments and building a theoretical understanding of fracture. Upon constructing an idealized model system for the crack and applying the principles of statistical thermodynamics, it is possible to formulate the rate of thermally activated crack growth as a function of load, but the result is analytically intractable. In this report an asymptotically correct theory is used to obtain analytic approximations of the crack growth rate from the fundamental theoretical formulation. These crack growth rate relations are compared to those that exist in the literature and are validated with respect to Monte Carlo calculations and experiments. The success of this approach is encouraging for future modeling endeavors that might consider more complicated fracture mechanisms, such as inhomogeneity or a reactive environment.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Precise Dynamical Masses and Orbital Fits for β Pic b and β Pic c

We present a comprehensive orbital analysis to the exoplanets β Pictoris b and c that resolves previously reported tensions between the dynamical and evolutionary mass constraints on β Pic b. We use the Markov Chain Monte Carlo orbit code orvara to fit 15 years of radial velocities and relative astrometry (including recent GRAVITY measurements), absolute astrometry from Hipparcos and Gaia, and a single relative radial velocity measurement between β Pic A and b. We measure model-independent masses of 9.3{sub −2.5}{sup +2.6} M {sub Jup} for β Pic b and 8.3 ± 1.0 M {sub Jup} for β Pic c. These masses are robust to modest changes to the input data selection. We find a well-constrained eccentricity of 0.119 ± 0.008 for β Pic b, and an eccentricity of 0.21{sub −0.09}{sup +0.16} for β Pic c, with the two orbital planes aligned to within ∼05. Both planets’ masses are within ∼1σ of the predictions of hot-start evolutionary models and exclude cold starts. We validate our approach on N-body synthetic data integrated using REBOUND. We show that orvara can account for three-body effects in the β Pic system down to a level ∼5 times smaller than the GRAVITY uncertainties. Systematics in the masses and orbital parameters from orvara’s approximate treatment of multiplanet orbits are a factor of ∼5 smaller than the uncertainties we derive here. Future GRAVITY observations will improve the constraints on β Pic c’s mass and (especially) eccentricity, but improved constraints on the mass of β Pic b will likely require years of additional radial velocity monitoring and improved precision from future Gaia data releases.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Phonons of metallic hydrogen with quantum Monte Carlo

Here, we describe a simple scheme to perform phonon calculations with quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) methods and demonstrate it on metallic hydrogen. Because of the energy and length scales of metallic hydrogen and the statistical noise inherent to QMC methods, the conventional manner of calculating force constants is prohibitively expensive. We show that our alternate approach is nearly 100 times more efficient in resolving the force constants needed to calculate the phonon spectrum in the harmonic approximation. This requires only the calculation of atomic forces, as in the conventional approach, and otherwise little or no programmatic modification.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Learning the ground state of a non-stoquastic quantum Hamiltonian in a rugged neural network landscape

Strongly interacting quantum systems described by non-stoquastic Hamiltonians exhibit rich low-temperature physics. Yet, their study poses a formidable challenge, even for state-of-the-art numerical techniques. Here, we investigate systematically the performance of a class of universal variational wave-functions based on artificial neural networks, by considering the frustrated spin- 1/2 1 / 2 J_1-J_2 J 1 − J 2 Heisenberg model on the square lattice. Focusing on neural network architectures without physics-informed input, we argue in favor of using an ansatz consisting of two decoupled real-valued networks, one for the amplitude and the other for the phase of the variational wavefunction. By introducing concrete mitigation strategies against inherent numerical instabilities in the stochastic reconfiguration algorithm we obtain a variational energy comparable to that reported recently with neural networks that incorporate knowledge about the physical system. Through a detailed analysis of the individual components of the algorithm, we conclude that the rugged nature of the energy landscape constitutes the major obstacle in finding a satisfactory approximation to the ground state wavefunction, and prevents learning the correct sign structure. In particular, we show that in the present setup the neural network expressivity and Monte Carlo sampling are not primary limiting factors.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Continuous-time Monte Carlo renormalization group

We implement the Monte Carlo renormalization group approach in the continuous-time Monte Carlo simulation of a quantum system. In this work, we demonstrate numerically the emergent isotropy between space and time at large distances for the systems that exhibit Lorentz invariance at quantum criticality. Here, this allows us to estimate accurately the sound velocity for these quantum systems. $\textit{Q}$-state Potts models in one and two space dimensions are used to illustrate the method.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Sequential ensemble transform for Bayesian inverse problems

In this work, we present the Sequential Ensemble Transform (SET) method, an approach for generating approximate samples from a Bayesian posterior distribution. The method explores the posterior distribution by solving a sequence of discrete optimal transport problems to produce a series of transport plans which map prior samples to posterior samples. We prove that the sequence of Dirac mixture distributions produced by the SET method converges weakly to the true posterior as the sample size approaches infinity. Furthermore, our numerical results indicate that, when compared to standard Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods, the SET approach is more robust to the choice of Markov mutation kernels and requires less computational efforts to reach a similar accuracy when used to explore complex posterior distributions. Finally, we describe adaptive schemes that allow to completely automate the use of the SET method.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Fundamental gap of fluorographene by many-body GW and fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo methods

Fluorographene (FG) is a promising graphene-derived material with a large bandgap. Currently existing predictions of its fundamental gap (Δ f ) and optical gap (Δ opt ) significantly vary when compared with experiment. We provide here an ultimate benchmark of Δ f for FG by many-body GW and fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo (FNDMC) methods. Both approaches independently arrive at Δf ≈ 7.1 ± 0.1 eV. In addition, the Bethe–Salpeter equation enabled us to determine the first exciton binding energy, Eb = 1.92 eV. We also point to the possible misinterpretation problem of the results obtained for gaps of solids by FNDMC with single-reference trial wave functions of Bloch orbitals. We argue why instead of Δ opt , in the thermodynamic limit,

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Quantum magnetism on small-world networks

While classical spin systems in random networks have been intensively studied, much less is known about quantum magnets in random graphs. In this work, we investigate interacting quantum spins on small-world networks, building on mean-field theory and extensive quantum Monte Carlo simulations. Starting from one-dimensional (1D) rings, we consider two situations: All-to-all interacting and long-range interactions randomly added. The effective infinite dimension of the lattice leads to a magnetic ordering at finite temperature Tc with mean-field criticality. Nevertheless, in contrast to the classical case, we find two distinct power-law behaviors for Tc versus the average strength of the extra couplings. This is controlled by a competition between a characteristic length scale of the random graph and the thermal correlation length of the underlying 1D system, thus challenging mean-field theories. We also investigate the fate of a gapped 1D spin chain against the small-world effect.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

High-dimensional methods for quantum homodyne tomography

We provide optimized recursion relations for homodyne tomography. We improve previous methods by mitigating the divergences intrinsic in the calculation of the pattern functions used previously, and detail how to implement the data analysis through Monte Carlo simulations. Our refinements are necessary for the reconstruction of excited quantum states which populate a high-dimensional subspace of the electromagnetic field Hilbert space. •Stabilization of numerics for quantum homodyne tomography reconstructions.•High dimensional quantum homodyne tomography reconstruction.•Monte Carlo simulations of quantum homodyne tomography.•Quantum Homodyne tomography simulations.

Mosco, Nicola↗

Monte Carlo evaluation of the semiclassical multi-step direct reaction series

We show how the multi-step direct reaction series can be evaluated using Monte Carlo methods. Nucleon-nucleon collisions occur according to the random selection of a nucleon’s attenuation factor along its classical trajectory. The particles and hole excited in a collision are selected from a local Fermi distribution. We assume that the particles continue to propagate and possibly collide again before leaving the nucleus. We assume that holes collide in place, to possibly produce other particles and holes.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Mitigating the Sign Problem through Basis Rotations

Quantum Monte Carlo simulations of quantum many-body systems are plagued by the Fermion sign problem. The computational complexity of simulating Fermions scales exponentially in the projection time β and system size. The sign problem is basis dependent and an improved basis, for fixed errors, leads to exponentially quicker simulations. Herein, we show how to use sign-free quantum Monte Carlo simulations to optimize over the choice of basis on large two-dimensional systems. We numerically illustrate these techniques decreasing the “badness” of the sign problem by optimizing over single-particle basis rotations on one- and two-dimensional Hubbard systems. We find a generic rotation which improves the average sign of the Hubbard model for a wide range of U and densities for L×4 systems. In one example improvement, the average sign (and hence simulation cost at fixed accuracy) for the 16×4 Hubbard model at U/t=4 and n=0.75 increases by exp[8.64(6)β]. For typical projection times of β ≳ 100, this accelerates such simulation by many orders of magnitude.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Accelerating multicanonical sampling with irreversibility

Flat-histogram Monte Carlo simulations are well-established, robust methods to perform random walks in a physical observable or parameter space, making them suitable for finding ground states or studying phase transitions in complex systems in statistical physics. However, their efficiency can be limited by the time to attain the desired flat distribution, which is generally unknown prior to the simulations. In particular, they might suffer from slowing down towards the end of a simulation due to the diffusive nature of random walks. In this work we apply irreversibility to the multicanonical Monte Carlo method via the lifting approach to alleviate this behavior. We achieve a 2–4 times speedup in ground-state search for a two-dimensional (2D) Ising model, and up to an order of magnitude of speedup for finding the ground-state energy in an Edwards–Anderson spin glass, compared to traditional multicanonical sampling. In conclusion, the round-trip times between ground states show a narrower distribution and are significantly shorter compared to the reversible counterpart, suggesting that a lower convergence time with a smaller time variance is feasible.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

A Detailed Characterization of HR 8799's Debris Disk with ALMA in Band 7

The exoplanetary system of HR 8799 is one of the rare systems in which multiple planets have been directly imaged. Its architecture is strikingly similar to that of the solar system, with the four imaged giant planets surrounding a warm dust belt analogous to the Asteroid Belt, and themselves being surrounded by a cold dust belt analog to the Kuiper Belt. Previous observations of this cold belt with ALMA in Band 6 (1.3 mm) revealed its inner edge, but analyses of the data differ on its precise location. It was therefore unclear whether or not the outermost planet HR 8799 b was dynamically sculpting it. We present here new ALMA observations of this debris disk in Band 7 (340 GHz, 880 μm). These are the most detailed observations of this disk obtained so far, with a resolution of 1″ (40 au) and sensitivity of 9.8 μJy beam{sup −1}, which allowed us to recover the disk structure with high confidence. In order to constrain the disk morphology, we fit its emission using radiative transfer models combined with a Markov Chain Monte Carlo procedure. We find that this disk cannot be adequately represented by a single power law with sharp edges. It exhibits a smoothly rising inner edge and smoothly falling outer edge, with a peak in between, as expected from a disk that contains a high-eccentricity component, hence confirming previous findings. Whether this excited population and inner edge shape stem from the presence of an additional planet remains, however, an open question.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

ORNL’s Continuing Efforts in Evaluating and Validating TSLs [Slides]

This presentation finds that INS measurements are not as variable based on sample composition, because phonon spectra is a properly of the bulk material. Additionally, INS and transmission measurements are and should be the most significant part of TSL validation, as they are the fundamental quantities used by Monte Carlo neutronics codes. This presentation reasons that relaying solely on theoretical atomistic calculations for TSL evaluation is not enough, they are highly dependent on inter-atomic potentials (which are not the most accurate depending on the quantity trying to be reproduced) and evaluators knowledge and understanding of the material being studied. Finally on Critical benchmarks, while extremely useful for validation of nuclear data at all energies, critical benchmarks are not the best tool to provide a definitive answer on conflicting TSLs. The presentation concludes that INS and transmission measurements need to be the basis of validation of TSLs.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Bayesian optimization of PYTHIA 8 tunes

A new tune (set of model parameters) is found for the six most important parameters of the PYTHIA 8 final state parton shower and hadronization model using Bayesian optimization. The tune fits the Large Electron-Positron collider (LEPI) data from ALEPH better than the default tune in PYTHIA 8. To the best of our knowledge, we present the most comprehensive application of Bayesian optimization to the tuning of a parton shower and hadronization model using the LEPI data.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗