VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
High Precision Monte Carlo Event Generation for Particle Colliders

Matrix-element calculations and parton shower programs are both crucial tools in the analysis of data at modern particle physics experiments at colliders. Finding the most effective ways to combine these complementary, but sometimes conflicting, approaches to simulating physical events has been the subject of much work in the recent decade. This thesis investigates state-of-the-art ways in which the precision of the matrix elements can be extended in combination with the parton shower. We identify three dimensions along which precision can be improved and describe how progress can be made along each one./nFirst, we present a general method to match fully differential next-to-next-to-leading-order (NNLO) calculations to parton shower (PS) programs, which represents an extension of the successful LO+PS (leading order) and NLO+PS (next-to-leading order) frameworks to NNLO+PS. We discuss in detail the perturbative accuracy criteria a complete NNLO+PS matching has to satisfy, and we give an explicit and general construction of the input "Monte Carlo cross sections" satisfying all required criteria./nNext, we describe how augmenting an NLO calculation with higher-order resummation of large Sudakov logarithms allows one to extend the lowest-order matching of tree-level matrix elements with parton showers to give a complete description at the next higher perturbative accuracy in αs, at both small and large jet resolutions. As a byproduct, this combination naturally leads to a smooth connection of the NLO calculations for different jet multiplicities. We focus on the general construction of our method and present results of an implementation in the GENEVA Monte Carlo framework. For leptonic collisions, we apply our construction to e+e- → jets and obtain good agreement with LEP data for a variety of 2-jet observables. For hadronic collisions, we look at Drell-Yan production.

Advisor: Bauer, Christian W
MONOIDAL STRUCTURE IN MIRROR SYMMETRY AND NONCOMMUTATIVE GEOMETRY

In the thesis, we initial first steps in understanding Quantum Mirror Symmetry and noncommutative compactification of moduli spaces of tori. To obtain a global invariant of noncommutative torus bundle, we study the monodromy of Gauss-Manin connection on periodic cyclic homology groups of Heisenberg group. Then the global monodromy map is developed, and provides a important criterion to detect when a noncommutative torus bundle is dequantizable. A process to construct the dequantizing Poisson manifold is given, when the dequantization criterion is satisfied. Naively, it seems that the Morita theory for noncommutative torus bundles can be developed naturally as in Rieffel theory for rotation algebras. However, this assumption turns out to be wrong; the Morita class of a non-dequantizable noncommutative torus bundle is not a classical object in the category of C*- algebras, and we call them C*- stacks. Even with the extended notion of C*- stacks, the Morita theory is still incompatible with noncommutative torus bundles with the infinite Poisson limit. There is no rotation algebra that can be used to compactify the moduli space of rotation algebras, even though we know that the "infinite Poisson rotation algebra" is strongly Morita equivalent to the classical torus. This subtlety is completely solved by a new mathematical structure hidden behind the quantization of constant Dirac structures on the tori./nWe develop a new theory of quantum spaces called spatial structure to give a better understanding of quantum spaces and torus fibrations. We clarify some examples of spatial algebras and develop a rigorous way to construct a monoidal structure from the spatial structure. Using Hilsum-Skandalis maps between groupoids, we find that a groupoid presentation of a C* - algebra implies a monoidal structure on the category of representations. We decompose the spatial product of the cyclic modules over the rotation algebras as an example, and propose a conjecture that a quantum mirror symmetry lies behind the spatial structure and the Hopfish structure in the sense of Tang and Weinstein.

Advisor: Weinstein, Alan D
Rule-encoding neurons in prefrontal and auditory cortex of rats performing a task similar to the cocktail party problem

The human auditory system easily solves the "cocktail party problem" - that is, even when multiple people are speaking at once, we can easily select and pay attention to a single voice while ignoring the others. Though this seems easy to do, the problem is known to be quite computationally complex. It requires identifying the important sound, selecting it for special processing, and using information from it to make behavioral decisions; meanwhile, the other voices must not be allowed to distract us./nHow does the brain do this? In chapter 1, I review previous approaches to this question and motivate the choices I made in designing my experiments. In chapter 2, I present the data and conclusions I obtained in collaboration with my advisor, Dr Michael DeWeese. (We are submitting this chapter for publication separately.) In chapter 3, I present a detailed protocol for repeating our behavioral results./nThe final chapter, Chapter 4, is broader in scope. I discuss how our models and results relate to existing models of prefrontal control over other brain regions. Finally, I consider what my results have taught me about the scientific process of investigating neural function and ruminate on where this field may be headed next.

Advisor: DeWeese, Michael
Development of a Silicon Semiconductor Quantum Dot Qubit with Dispersive Microwave Readout

Semiconductor quantum dots in silicon demonstrate exceptionally long spin lifetimes as qubits and are therefore promising candidates for quantum information processing. However, control and readout techniques for these devices have thus far employed low frequency electrons, in contrast to high speed temperature readout techniques used in other qubit architectures, and coupling between multiple quantum dot qubits has not been satisfactorily addressed./nThis dissertation presents the design and characterization of a semiconductor charge qubit based on double quantum dot in silicon with an integrated microwave resonator for control and readout. The 6 GHz resonator is designed to achieve strong coupling with the quantum dot qubit, allowing the use of circuit QED control and readout techniques which have not previously been applicable to semiconductor qubits. To achieve this coupling, this document demonstrates successful operation of a novel silicon double quantum dot design with a single active metallic layer and a coplanar stripline resonator with a bias tee for dc excitation./nExperiments presented here demonstrate quantum localization and measurement of both electrons on the quantum dot and photons in the resonator. Further, it is shown that the resonator-qubit coupling in these devices is sufficient to reach the strong coupling regime of circuit QED. The details of a measurement setup capable of performing simultaneous low noise measurements of the resonator and quantum dot structure are also presented here./nThe ultimate aim of this research is to integrate the long coherence times observed in electron spins in silicon with the sophisticated readout architectures available in circuit QED based quantum information systems. This would allow superconducting qubits to be coupled directly to semiconductor qubits to create hybrid quantum systems with separate quantum memory and processing components.

Advisor: Siddiqi, Irfan
Compensation for Camera Motion on Unsteady Robots for Optical Flow

Some modes of locomotion, such as legged walking and flapping flight, are inherently unsteady due to the cyclic interaction of the subject's limbs with a changing and largely unmodelled environment. Bio-inspired robots that locomote this way, present a unique chal- lenge to indoor navigation because the sensors used for exteroception record this unsteadiness in their readings. A legged crawler's unsteady dynamics are explored with an emphasis on how these affect optical flow estimation, which mediates navigation. A triaxial gyroscope is sampled concurrently with the on-board video and is used to disambiguate the motion estimates through image derotation. The optical flow algorithm's gains are further tuned using policy gradient reinforcement learning so as to improve motion estimation for specific unsteady regimes. This approach is demonstrated in an obstacle avoidance scenario.

Advisor: Fearing, Ronald S
First-principles studies of electron-phonon induced superconductivity and beyond

The prospect of precisely predicting the behavior of solids entirely by means of theory and computations is enticing. This dissertation presents the results of the application of the first-principles physical approaches to study superconductivity in a set of materials./nIn the first chapter a brief overview of the key concepts used in this manuscript in given. A description of the theoretical methodology and the key computational techniques used in this work constitute the subject of chapter 2. Studies of class-I/conventional and class-II/non-conventional superconducting materials are contained in chapters 3 and 4 respectively. In particular, precise calculations of the electron-phonon interaction and superconducting parameters of elemental lithium at ambient conditions and under pressure and lithium-intercalated borocarbide compounds are presented. In addition, the application of first-principle techniques to study iron selenide in multiple configurations is given./nA discussion of superconductivity in complex oxides is presented in chapter 5 with emphasis on the importance of oxygen octahedra tilts. And, finally, concluding remarks from the author are given in the last chapter.

Advisor: Cohen, Marvin L
Why Read Poems in Such Hard Times? Sociopolitical History and Aesthetic Commitment in Modern Hebrew, Yiddish and German Poetry

This dissertation focuses on what art in general and poetry in particular can reveal about sociopolitical history, and on the possible significance of such knowledge or understanding for human subjectivity and ethical-political agency. Following Marxian-inflected theory my claim is that the assumption that poetry and the other arts do not differ, first from already-conceptualized, purpose-driven thought, and then from actual action, is not only dangerously delusional, but also ignores the most radical potential of poetry. Poetry is an imaginative construction that is felt to be as if it were already an objective truth, als ob, in Kant's terms, but is in fact something not yet actually proven to be objective. This in turn makes aesthetic experience imaginatively and affectively available to us without the conceptual constraints that delimit objectively-oriented thought and action in the real, empirical world itself. It is in this sense that art allows for the activation of subjectivity and agency not already known and stipulated./nMore specifically, this dissertation identifies the role that Jewish poets ascribed to modern Hebrew and Yiddish poetry from a perspective wrought through a rich engagement with German literary culture. I show how both Yiddish and Hebrew modernist poetry provides and records unique evidence of historical experience. This study also examines how and why modern Hebrew Israeli poetry is haunted by the possibility that the newly established state of Israel might be moving away catastrophically from the imperative to achieve a genuinely democratic configuration. Finally, it examines how and why this legacy of critical examination of the sociopolitical reality still suffuses the aesthetic vocations of Israeli poetry today./nThis project follows three main routes. The first is an exploration of the work of the Yiddish poet Moyshe-Leyb Halpern (1886-1932), read in light of its engagement with the poetry of Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), the poet Halpern admired most; the second is a comparative study of David Avidan's poetry, and to a lesser extent Natan Zach's, with the poetry and thought of Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) and, through Brecht, Heine again; the third route is a study of the concept of poetry promoted by the American-born contemporary Israeli poet, Harold Schimmel (b.1935), in light of both Frankfurt School aesthetics and Halpern's poetics./nThe complex constellation of poetic works and histories that this dissertation undertakes reveals how poetry emerges out of self-other relations, and in what ways these dynamics facilitate an agency effect, that is, an agency that is never already established, but is always coming into being. It is this notion of felt-agency, I further show, that is vital for the establishment a non-violent public sphere, one that is urgently needed today.

Advisor: Kronfeld, Chana
Kaufman, Robert
Pioneer Round of Translation Supplies Peptides for Major Histocompatibility Complex Class I Presentation

Cytotoxic T cells monitor MHC class I complexes on antigen presenting cells for the potential presence of any non-self peptides that could derive from viral infection or cancerous cells. Effective immune surveillance requires that MHC class I molecules display a peptide repertoire on the surface representing all cellular proteins. This ensures that foreign antigens from all sources are presented. How the peptide repertoire can be comprehensive despite the large differences in abundance and stability of individual proteins is not known./nThe pioneer round of translation is the first round of translation that occurs on newly spliced mRNA. It is associated with nonsense-mediated decay of mRNAs, allowing cells to detect and eliminate the aberrant mRNAs containing premature stop codons. We showed here that the peptide presentation by MHC I molecules was strongly influenced by the pioneer round of translation. Inhibition of the pioneer round of translation by knockdown of CBP80, a nuclear cap-binding protein, reduced peptide presentation by MHC class I molecules on the cell surface without affecting global protein synthesis. On the other hand, introduction of premature stop codons changed mRNA stability without affecting peptide presentation by MHC I on the cell surface. In addition, intronless mRNAs bypassing the pioneer round of translation resulted in reduced MHC I presentation on the cell surface. Furthermore, knockdown of CBP80 led to the deficiency of the cytosolic peptides delivered by the transporter associated with antigen processing (TAP) for the MHC class I pathway. Together, these findings highlight the importance of the pioneer round of translation in deriving peptides to generate a comprehensive display of virtually all endogenous proteins for the immune surveillance

Advisor: Shastri, Nilabh
Hybrid Aerial and Terrestrial Locomotion, and Implications for Avian Flight Evolution

Recent advances in the development of meso-scale legged robots have enabled high performance over a variety of terrains. However, there are still many environments where terrestrial legged robots are limited. The addition of aerodynamic capabilities provides a method of further extending the performance of small mobile robots towards all-terrain mobility./nThis dissertation presents the development of DASH+Wings and BOLT, two small hybrid legged and winged robots. DASH+Wings is a six-legged, two-winged robot capable of wing-assisted terrestrial running and controlled aerial descent. BOLT is a two-legged, four-winged robot capable of high-speed terrestrial running and sustained flight. While the dynamics of legged locomotion have been extensively studied, the interaction between legs and flapping wings during terrestrial locomotion is poorly understood. WingSLIP, an extension to the canonical SLIP model for understanding wing-assisted terrestrial locomotion, is introduced. Analysis of the leg/wing phasing and leg stiffnesses elucidates the interaction between the legs and wings. The model suggests the presence of passively stable gaits for high-speed wing-assisted terrestrial running. The dynamics of wing-assisted terrestrial locomotion for a quasi-static and dynamic gait are examined using BOLT with the addition of an on-board accelerometer and rate gyroscope. The flapping wings enable BOLT to run at over two ms-1 and take off in as little as one meter of space. In addition to flapping wings, the passive effects of aerodynamics on a high-speed legged robot (VelociRoACH) are also examined. Passive aerodynamic stabilization is shown to improve the performance and stability of the system. An examination of avian flight evolution is performed using DASH+Wings to examine the consequences of adding wings to a cursorial locomotor. We note that current support for the diverse theories of avian flight origins derive from limited fossil evidence, the adult behavior of extant flying birds, and developmental stages of already volant taxa. The addition of flapping wings increased the maximum horizontal running speed and the maximum terrestrial incline angle of ascent, along with decreasing the aerial descent angle. To better examine avian flight evolution, a scaled model of Archaeopteryx is developed, and the effects of flapping frequency and amplitude are examined through the use of wind tunnel measurements. The findings are discussed in the context of existing hypotheses for the origins of flapping flight in vertebrates.

Advisor: Fearing, Ronald S
Where Truth Lies: Political Documentary Film & Digital Media, 2000-2010

Recent scholarship treats the transition to the digital format in documentary film as a straightforward change in production practices or distribution channels, ignoring the deeper implications of digital technology for non-fiction moving image media. Far from a simple transition in the technology used to shoot and produce these films, however, digital technology has altered, and been altered by, documentary film to a far greater extent than any previous period in its history. The first decade of the twenty first century gave rise to dramatic technological, aesthetic and political revolutions around the globe, dramatic events mirrored in the rapid evolution of documentary form across the same time period./nThis project focuses on the emergence of digital documentary in the context of the ideological shifts and social conflicts of the early 21st century. As blogs, social networks and mobile technologies became the connective tissue of political dissent and social mobilization over this period, these technologies utilized documentary's unique synthesis of visible evidence and rhetorical argument, while pushing its traditional form in unexpected new directions. In the polarized climate surrounding contentious events such as the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq, new modes of visual representation became both viable and desirable. Data visualization and virtual environments began picturing the world alongside, and even within feature-length films. Beyond simply providing visual content on newly digital platforms, documentary film now provides a conceptual framework for understanding much of the social impulse of political activism today. Conversely, computational forms of representation and social organization radically undermine the privileged if problematic role optical media once claimed in representing reality. By identifying the moments of rupture where prior forms of representation and persuasion were discarded or discredited, I demonstrate that `truth' now lies in a new set of discursive practices emerging and coalescing over the last 10 years, standards which implicitly shape the documentation of everything from widespread social movements like Occupy to isolated, viral phenomena like the "Kony 2012" video.

Advisor: Williams, Linda
Black Holes, Branes, and Knots in String Theory

String theory has proven to be fertile ground for interactions between physical and mathematical ideas. This dissertation develops several new points of contact where emerging mathematical ideas can be applied to stringy physics, and conversely where stringy insights suggest new mathematical structures. In the first half, I explain how the formula of Kontsevich and Soibelman (KS) can be used to compute the spectrum of stable BPS particles in Calabi-Yau compactifications and I show that dimer models can be used to prove the KS formula for walls of the second kind in toric Calabi-Yau manifolds. I also explain how dimer models give a way of associating integrable systems to Calabi-Yau threefolds and show that this map agrees with an existing gauge-theoretic map. The second half of this dissertation focuses on a background in M-theory that defines the refined topological string. I explain how orientifolds can be introduced into this background, leading to new integrality conditions on amplitudes and to new invariants for torus knots. Finally, I introduce a new duality that relates the refined counting of supersymmetric balck hole entropy and refined topological string theory.

Advisor: Aganagic, Mina
Playing Nature: The Virtual Ecology of Game Environments

Playing Nature proposes new methods and objects for environmental inquiry through ecologically minded engagement with the imaginative worlds of contemporary gaming. The work recognizes that though some of the most sophisticated scholarship on natural representation has evolved within literary environmental criticism, as a humanistic field steeped in Romanticism, ecocriticism has tended to exclude designed landscapes and modes of mediated interaction perceived as detracting from direct experience of the natural world. At the same time, new media theorists and practitioners have generally overlooked the ways in which emerging technologies are implicated in and by natural systems. Most mainstream games, for instance, offer game environments as simplistic vehicles for graphical spectacle or extractive resource management./nRather than perpetuate the popular notion that the natural and the digital are realms inherently inimical to each other, Playing Nature contends that our experience of the natural world is not only increasingly mediated by digital technology, but also that our interactions with these technomediated natures inevitably shape our conceptions of individual and collective agency in relation to our environment. Despite the present historical moment, in which environmental movements are often stymied in their efforts to depict the scale and urgency of global environmental crisis (most notably in the case of climate change), games remain largely untapped in terms of their potential to allow players to explore manifold ecological futures. Because successful gameplay requires that players negotiate environments by discovering their operative logics, games are structurally predisposed toward creating meaningful interaction within artificially intelligent environments and modeling dynamics long at the core of ecological thinking, among them interdependence, feedback, scale, and human limitation. Games offer imagined worlds that can compress centuries of change into the matter of hours, range from microcosmic to macrocosmic extremes, and dramatize recuperation just as readily as catastrophe, virtual ecologies that are mirrors to our modernity.

Advisor: Bates, David