In relational verification, judicious alignment of computational steps facilitates proof of relations between programs using simple relational assertions. Relational Hoare logics (RHL) provide compositional rules that embody various alignments of executions. Seemingly more flexible alignments can be expressed in terms of product automata based on program transition relations. A single degenerate alignment rule (self-composition), atop a complete Hoare logic, comprises a RHL for $\forall\forall$ properties that is complete in the ordinary logical sense. The notion of alignment completeness was previously proposed as a more satisfactory measure, and some rules were shown to be alignment complete with respect to a few ad hoc forms of alignment automata. This paper proves alignment completeness with respect to a general class of $\forall\forall$ alignment automata, for a RHL comprised of standard rules together with a rule of semantics-preserving rewrites based on Kleene algebra with tests. A new logic for $\forall\exists$ properties is introduced and shown to be alignment complete. The $\forall\forall$ and $\forall\exists$ automata are shown to be semantically complete. Thus the logics are both complete in the ordinary sense.
For problems of time-harmonic scattering by rational polygonal obstacles, embedding formulae express the far-field pattern induced by any incident plane wave in terms of the far-field patterns for a relatively small (frequency-independent) set of canonical incident angles. Although these remarkable formulae are exact in theory, here we demonstrate that: (i) they are highly sensitive to numerical errors in practice, and; (ii) direct calculation of the coefficients in these formulae may be impossible for particular sets of canonical incident angles, even in exact arithmetic. Only by overcoming these practical issues can embedding formulae provide a highly efficient approach to computing the far-field pattern induced by a large number of incident angles. Here we propose solutions for problems (i) and (ii), backed up by theory and numerical experiments. Problem (i) is solved using techniques from computational complex analysis: we reformulate the embedding formula as a complex contour integral and prove that this is much less sensitive to numerical errors. In practice, this contour integral can be efficiently evaluated by residue calculus. Problem (ii) is addressed using techniques from numerical linear algebra: we oversample, considering more canonical incident angles than are necessary, thus expanding the space of valid coefficients vectors. The coefficients vectors can then be selected using either a least squares approach or column subset selection.
We address speech enhancement based on variational autoencoders, which involves learning a speech prior distribution in the time-frequency (TF) domain. A zero-mean complex-valued Gaussian distribution is usually assumed for the generative model, where the speech information is encoded in the variance as a function of a latent variable. In contrast to this commonly used approach, we propose a weighted variance generative model, where the contribution of each spectrogram time-frame in parameter learning is weighted. We impose a Gamma prior distribution on the weights, which would effectively lead to a Student's t-distribution instead of Gaussian for speech generative modeling. We develop efficient training and speech enhancement algorithms based on the proposed generative model. Our experimental results on spectrogram auto-encoding and speech enhancement demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed approach compared to the standard unweighted variance model.
This paper presents two methods for approximating a proper subset of the entries of a Hessian using only function evaluations. These approximations are obtained using the techniques called \emph{generalized simplex Hessian} and \emph{generalized centered simplex Hessian}. We show how to choose the matrices of directions involved in the computation of these two techniques depending on the entries of the Hessian of interest. We discuss the number of function evaluations required in each case and develop a general formula to approximate all order-$P$ partial derivatives. Since only function evaluations are required to compute the methods discussed in this paper, they are suitable for use in derivative-free optimization methods.
We present a streamlined and simplified exponential lower bound on the length of proofs in intuitionistic implicational logic, adapted to Gordeev and Haeusler's dag-like natural deduction.
Crash consistency using persistent memory programming libraries requires programmers to use complex transactions and manual annotations. In contrast, the failure-atomic msync() (FAMS) interface is much simpler as it transparently tracks updates and guarantees that modified data is atomically durable on a call to the failure-atomic variant of msync(). However, FAMS suffers from several drawbacks, like the overhead of msync() and the write amplification from page-level dirty data tracking. To address these drawbacks while preserving the advantages of FAMS, we propose Snapshot, an efficient userspace implementation of FAMS. Snapshot uses compiler-based annotation to transparently track updates in userspace and syncs them with the backing byte-addressable storage copy on a call to msync(). By keeping a copy of application data in DRAM, Snapshot improves access latency. Moreover, with automatic tracking and syncing changes only on a call to msync(), Snapshot provides crash-consistency guarantees, unlike the POSIX msync() system call. For a KV-Store backed by Intel Optane running the YCSB benchmark, Snapshot achieves at least 1.2$\times$ speedup over PMDK while significantly outperforming conventional (non-crash-consistent) msync(). On an emulated CXL memory semantic SSD, Snapshot outperforms PMDK by up to 10.9$\times$ on all but one YCSB workload, where PMDK is 1.2$\times$ faster than Snapshot. Further, Kyoto Cabinet commits perform up to 8.0$\times$ faster with Snapshot than its built-in, msync()-based crash-consistency mechanism.
The multispecies Landau collision operator describes the two-particle, small scattering angle or grazing collisions in a plasma made up of different species of particles such as electrons and ions. Recently, a structure preserving deterministic particle method arXiv:1910.03080 has been developed for the single species spatially homogeneous Landau equation. This method relies on a regularization of the Landau collision operator so that an approximate solution, which is a linear combination of Dirac delta distributions, is well-defined. Based on a weak form of the regularized Landau equation, the time dependent locations of the Dirac delta functions satisfy a system of ordinary differential equations. In this work, we extend this particle method to the multispecies case, and examine its conservation of mass, momentum, and energy, and decay of entropy properties. We show that the equilibrium distribution of the regularized multispecies Landau equation is a Maxwellian distribution, and state a critical condition on the regularization parameters that guarantees a species independent equilibrium temperature. A convergence study comparing an exact multispecies BKW solution to the particle solution shows approximately 2nd order accuracy. Important physical properties such as conservation, decay of entropy, and equilibrium distribution of the particle method are demonstrated with several numerical examples.
Quantum computing promises transformational gains for solving some problems, but little to none for others. For anyone hoping to use quantum computers now or in the future, it is important to know which problems will benefit. In this paper, we introduce a framework for answering this question both intuitively and quantitatively. The underlying structure of the framework is a race between quantum and classical computers, where their relative strengths determine when each wins. While classical computers operate faster, quantum computers can sometimes run more efficient algorithms. Whether the speed advantage or the algorithmic advantage dominates determines whether a problem will benefit from quantum computing or not. Our analysis reveals that many problems, particularly those of small to moderate size that can be important for typical businesses, will not benefit from quantum computing. Conversely, larger problems or those with particularly big algorithmic gains will benefit from near-term quantum computing. Since very large algorithmic gains are rare in practice and theorized to be rare even in principle, our analysis suggests that the benefits from quantum computing will flow either to users of these rare cases, or practitioners processing very large data.
We propose a method for computing the Lyapunov exponents of renewal equations (delay equations of Volterra type) and of coupled systems of renewal and delay differential equations. The method consists in the reformulation of the delay equation as an abstract differential equation, the reduction of the latter to a system of ordinary differential equations via pseudospectral collocation, and the application of the standard discrete QR method. The effectiveness of the method is shown experimentally and a MATLAB implementation is provided.
The monotonicity of discrete Laplacian implies discrete maximum principle, which in general does not hold for high order schemes. The $Q^2$ spectral element method has been proven monotone on a uniform rectangular mesh. In this paper we prove the monotonicity of the $Q^2$ spectral element method on quasi-uniform rectangular meshes under certain mesh constraints. In particular, we propose a relaxed Lorenz's condition for proving monotonicity.
The goal of explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) is to generate human-interpretable explanations, but there are no computationally precise theories of how humans interpret AI generated explanations. The lack of theory means that validation of XAI must be done empirically, on a case-by-case basis, which prevents systematic theory-building in XAI. We propose a psychological theory of how humans draw conclusions from saliency maps, the most common form of XAI explanation, which for the first time allows for precise prediction of explainee inference conditioned on explanation. Our theory posits that absent explanation humans expect the AI to make similar decisions to themselves, and that they interpret an explanation by comparison to the explanations they themselves would give. Comparison is formalized via Shepard's universal law of generalization in a similarity space, a classic theory from cognitive science. A pre-registered user study on AI image classifications with saliency map explanations demonstrate that our theory quantitatively matches participants' predictions of the AI.