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The spatial and spectral distributions of terahertz (THz) pulses emitted by two-color air plasmas are theoretically investigated for focused laser pulses and in the filamentation regime. We derive a so-called ''augmented'' conical emission model, which, similarly to the one originally proposed by You et al.\ [Phys.\ Rev.\ Lett.\ {\bf 109}, 183902 (2012)], involves phase matching between laser harmonics along the plasma channel, the plasma density and length, and the emitted frequency as key parameters. Our augmented model, however, treats envelope effects and accounts for transverse variations of both plasma- and Kerr-driven potential THz emitters. We highlight the importance of the characteristic spatio-spectral distributions of these two conversion mechanisms in the expression of the angular radiated power. The results of our model are successfully compared with data provided by a comprehensive, fully space and time-resolved unidirectional solver. Importantly, these numerical simulations clear up the effective plasma length along which THz emission develops, compared with the dephasing length along which the laser fundamental and second harmonic become out-of-phase. The impact of common optical aberrations, such as sphericity, astigmatism, and coma, on the THz generation is also investigated. Aberrations are shown to generally decrease the laser-to-THz conversion efficiency and potentially induce spatial asymmetries and narrowing in the THz spectra., Comment: 22 pages, 18 figures

Exciton-plasmon polaritons (EPPs) are attractive both for the exploration of fundamental phenomena and applications in nanophotonics. Previous studies of EPPs mainly relied on far-field characterization. Here, using near-field optical microscopy, we quantitatively characterize the dispersion of EPPs existing in 13-nm-thick tungsten diselenide (WSe$_2$) deposited on a monocrystalline gold platelet. We extract from our experimental data a Rabi splitting of 81 meV, and an experimental effective polariton loss of 55 meV, demonstrating that our system is in the strong-coupling regime. Furthermore, we measure for the first time at visible wavelengths the propagation length of these EPPs for each excitation energy of the dispersion relation. To demonstrate the quantitative nature of our near-field method to obtain the full complex-valued wavevector of EPPs, we use our near-field measurements to predict, via the transfer matrix method, the far-field reflectivities across the exciton resonance. These predictions are in excellent agreement with our experimental far-field measurements. Our findings open the door towards the full near-field study of light-manipulating devices at the nanoscale., Comment: 21 pages, 3 figures

Popular reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms tend to produce a unimodal policy distribution, which weakens the expressiveness of complicated policy and decays the ability of exploration. The diffusion probability model is powerful to learn complicated multimodal distributions, which has shown promising and potential applications to RL. In this paper, we formally build a theoretical foundation of policy representation via the diffusion probability model and provide practical implementations of diffusion policy for online model-free RL. Concretely, we character diffusion policy as a stochastic process, which is a new approach to representing a policy. Then we present a convergence guarantee for diffusion policy, which provides a theory to understand the multimodality of diffusion policy. Furthermore, we propose the DIPO which is an implementation for model-free online RL with DIffusion POlicy. To the best of our knowledge, DIPO is the first algorithm to solve model-free online RL problems with the diffusion model. Finally, extensive empirical results show the effectiveness and superiority of DIPO on the standard continuous control Mujoco benchmark.

Safe reinforcement learning (RL) studies problems where an intelligent agent has to not only maximize reward but also avoid exploring unsafe areas. In this study, we propose CUP, a novel policy optimization method based on Constrained Update Projection framework that enjoys rigorous safety guarantee. Central to our CUP development is the newly proposed surrogate functions along with the performance bound. Compared to previous safe RL methods, CUP enjoys the benefits of 1) CUP generalizes the surrogate functions to generalized advantage estimator (GAE), leading to strong empirical performance. 2) CUP unifies performance bounds, providing a better understanding and interpretability for some existing algorithms; 3) CUP provides a non-convex implementation via only first-order optimizers, which does not require any strong approximation on the convexity of the objectives. To validate our CUP method, we compared CUP against a comprehensive list of safe RL baselines on a wide range of tasks. Experiments show the effectiveness of CUP both in terms of reward and safety constraint satisfaction. We have opened the source code of CUP at this link https://github.com/zmsn-2077/ CUP-safe-rl., Comment: Accepted by NeurIPS2022. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2202.07565

Topological systems are inherently robust to disorder and continuous perturbations, resulting in dissipation-free edge transport of electrons in quantum solids, or reflectionless guiding of photons and phonons in classical wave systems characterized by topological invariants. Despite considerable efforts, direct experimental demonstration of theoretically predicted robust, lossless energy transport in topological insulators operating at terahertz frequencies is needed further investigations to shed affirmative light on the unique properties enabled by topological protection. Here, we introduce Kagome lattice that exhibits a new class of symmetry-protected topological phases with very low Berry curvature but nontrivial bulk polarization, and fabricate an optical topological insulator that provide the valley hall effect. Theoretical analysis show that four type edge states can be obtained. Measurements of THz-TDs with high time-resolution demonstrate that terahertz wave propagating along the straight topological edge and Z-shape edge with sharp turns have almost same high transmission in 0.440 THz to 0.457 THz domain range. Those results quantitatively illustrate the suppression of backscattering due to the non-trivial topology of the structure. The THz-TDs measurement yields amplitude and phase information, showing significant advantage compared to general broadband infrared, single wavelength continuous-wave THz measurements and visible spectroscopy. It allows further exploration of the effective refractive index, group velocity and dispersion relations of edge states. Our work offers possibilities for advanced control of the propagation and manipulation of THz waves, and facilitates the applications including sixth-generation (6G) wireless communication, terahertz integrated circuits, and interconnects for intrachip and interchip communication.

We present a method to manipulate the final morphology of roll-to-roll slot-die coated poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) by optically exciting the p-type polymer in solution while coating. Our results provide a comprehensive picture of the entire knowledge chain, from demonstrating how to apply our method to a fundamental understanding of the changes in morphology and physical properties induced by exciting P3HT while coating. By combining results from density functional theory and molecular dynamics simulations with a variety of X-ray experiments, absorption spectroscopy, and THz spectroscopy, we demonstrate the relationship between morphology and physical properties of the thin film. Specifically, in P3HT films excited with light during deposition, we observe changes in crystallinity and texture with more face-on orientation and increased out-of-plane charge mobility.

Electrocatalysts based on transition metal sulfides are drawing accelerating concerns in renewable energy research because of their intrinsically excellent activities towards both hydrogen evolution reaction and oxygen evolution reaction. To date, considerable efforts are made to improve the performance of these catalysts, but ignoring the improper synthesis strategy would incur additional cost to the catalyst. Herein, a convenient, one-step anodization method is developed for fast construction of cobalt sulfides. Without any high-temperature or long-time treatment, mesoporous CoSx is self-grown on the metal substrate in minutes. As a result, as-anodic CoSx requires overpotentials of 102 mV for HER and 284 mV for OER to achieve a current density of 10 mA m-2 in alkaline solution. Moreover, the tandem bifunctional as-anodic CoSx exhibits a required cell voltage of 1.64 V for overall water splitting in alkaline solution, exceeding most of the documented Co-based electrocatalysts., Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures

We demonstrate terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) to be an accurate, rapid and scalable method to probe the interaction-induced Fermi velocity renormalization {\nu}F^* of charge carriers in graphene. This allows the quantitative extraction of all electrical parameters (DC conductivity {\sigma}DC, carrier density n, and carrier mobility {\mu}) of large-scale graphene films placed on arbitrary substrates via THz-TDS. Particularly relevant are substrates with low relative permittivity (< 5) such as polymeric films, where notable renormalization effects are observed even at relatively large carrier densities (> 10^12 cm-2, Fermi level > 0.1 eV). From an application point of view, the ability to rapidly and non-destructively quantify and map the electrical ({\sigma}DC, n, {\mu}) and electronic ({\nu}F^* ) properties of large-scale graphene on generic substrates is key to utilize this material in applications such as metrology, flexible electronics as well as to monitor graphene transfers using polymers as handling layers., Comment: 23 pages, 8 figures

Traffic violations like illegal parking, illegal turning, and speeding have become one of the greatest challenges in urban transportation systems, bringing potential risks of traffic congestions, vehicle accidents, and parking difficulties. To maximize the utility and effectiveness of the traffic enforcement strategies aiming at reducing traffic violations, it is essential for urban authorities to infer the traffic violation-prone locations in the city. Therefore, we propose a low-cost, comprehensive, and dynamic framework to infer traffic violation-prone locations in cities based on the large-scale vehicle trajectory data and road environment data. Firstly, we normalize the trajectory data by map matching algorithms and extract key driving behaviors, i.e., turning behaviors, parking behaviors, and speeds of vehicles. Secondly, we restore spatiotemporal contexts of driving behaviors to get corresponding traffic restrictions such as no parking, no turning, and speed restrictions. After matching the traffic restrictions with driving behaviors, we get the traffic violation distribution. Finally, we extract the spatiotemporal patterns of traffic violations, and build a visualization system to showcase the inferred traffic violation-prone locations. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method, we conduct extensive studies on large-scale, real-world vehicle GPS trajectories collected from two Chinese cities, respectively. Evaluation results confirm that the proposed framework infers traffic violation-prone locations effectively and efficiently, providing comprehensive decision supports for traffic enforcement strategies., Comment: 12 pages, 19 figures, accepted by IEEE System Journal

A pure silica photonic crystal fiber with a group velocity dispersion ($\beta_2$) of 4 ps$^2$/km at 1.55 $\mu$m and less than 7 ps$^2$/km from 1.32 $\mu$m to the zero dispersion wavelength (ZDW) 1.80 $\mu$m was designed and fabricated. The dispersion of the fiber was measured experimentally and found to agree with the fiber design, which also provides low loss below 1.83 $\mu$m due to eight outer rings with increased hole diameter. The fiber was pumped with a 1.55 $\mu$m, 125 fs laser and, at the maximum in-coupled peak power (P$_0$) of 9 kW, a 1.34$-$1.82 $\mu$m low-noise spectrum with a relative intensity noise below 2.2\% was measured. The numerical modeling agreed very well with the experiments and showed that P$_0$ could be increased to 26 kW before noise from solitons above the ZDW started to influence the spectrum by pushing high-noise dispersive waves through the spectrum.