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LiDAR-based 3D object detectors have been largely utilized in various applications, including autonomous vehicles or mobile robots. However, LiDAR-based detectors often fail to adapt well to target domains with different sensor configurations (e.g., types of sensors, spatial resolution, or FOVs) and location shifts. Collecting and annotating datasets in a new setup is commonly required to reduce such gaps, but it is often expensive and time-consuming. Recent studies suggest that pre-trained backbones can be learned in a self-supervised manner with large-scale unlabeled LiDAR frames. However, despite their expressive representations, they remain challenging to generalize well without substantial amounts of data from the target domain. Thus, we propose a novel method, called Domain Adaptive Distill-Tuning (DADT), to adapt a pre-trained model with limited target data (approximately 100 LiDAR frames), retaining its representation power and preventing it from overfitting. Specifically, we use regularizers to align object-level and context-level representations between the pre-trained and finetuned models in a teacher-student architecture. Our experiments with driving benchmarks, i.e., Waymo Open dataset and KITTI, confirm that our method effectively finetunes a pre-trained model, achieving significant gains in accuracy., Comment: Accepted in IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2024

JWST observations of galaxies at $z\gtrsim 8$ suggest that they are more luminous and clumpier than predicted by most models, prompting several proposals on the physics of star formation and feedback in the first galaxies. In this paper, we focus on the role of ultraviolet (UV) radiation in regulating star formation by performing a set of cosmological radiation hydrodynamics simulations of one galaxy at sub-pc resolution with different radiative feedback models. We find that the suppression of cooling by far UV (FUV) radiation (i.e., $\mathrm{H_2}$ dissociating radiation) from Pop II stars is the main physical process triggering the formation of compact and massive star clusters and is responsible for the bursty star formation observed in metal-poor galaxies at $z\gtrsim 10$. Indeed, artificially suppressing FUV radiation leads to a less intense continuous mode of star formation distributed into numerous, but low-mass open star clusters. Due to the intense FUV field, low-metallicity clouds remain warm ($\sim 10^4\,\mathrm{K}$) until they reach a relatively high density ($\gtrsim 10^3\,\mathrm{cm^{-3}}$), before becoming self-shielded and transitioning to a colder ($\sim 100\,\mathrm{K}$), partially molecular phase. As a result, star formation is delayed until the clouds accumulate enough mass to become gravitationally unstable. At this point, the clouds undergo rapid star formation converting gas into stars with high efficiency. We, therefore, observe exceptionally bright galaxies (ten times brighter than for continuous star formation) and subsequent quenched "dead" galaxies that did not form stars for tens of Myrs., Comment: 24 pages, 18 figures, published in ApJ, minor revisions

Outward migration of massive binary stars or black holes in their circumbinary disc is often observed in simulations and it is key to the formation of wide black hole binaries. Using numerical simulations of Population III (Pop III) star formation, we study the angular momentum of Pop III binaries and the torques between stars and gas discs to understand the origin of outward migration and high ellipticity. The outward migration of protostars is produced by gravitational torques exerted on them by their circumstellar minidiscs. The minidiscs, on the other hand, migrate outward mainly by gaining angular momentum by accreting gas from the circumbinary disc. The angular momentum transfer is most efficient for rapidly accreting equal-mass binaries, and weaker when the secondary mass is small or the massive companion evaporates the gas disc via radiative feedback. We conclude that outward migration and the formation of wide equal-mass massive binaries is common in metal-free/metal-poor star formation, mainly driven by their large accretion rates. We expect that the lower gas temperature and accretion rates in metal-enriched circumstellar discs would lead more often to inward migration and closer binary separations. We also observe inward migration for smaller mass Pop III protostars/fragments, leading to the rapid merging of sink particles and likely the formation of close binary black holes that, however, reach separations below the resolution of our simulations. We discuss the implications that Pop III separations and ellipticity may have on the interpretation that gravitational wave signals from merging intermediate-mass black holes come from Pop III remnants., Comment: 20 pages, 17+4 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

Using radiation-hydrodynamic cosmological simulations, we present a detailed ($0.1$ pc resolution), physically motivated portrait of a typical-mass dwarf galaxy before the epoch of reionization, resolving the formation and evolution of star clusters into individual $10\:\mathrm{M_{\odot}}$ star particles. In the rest-frame UV, the galaxy has an irregular morphology with no bulge or galactic disk, dominated by light emitted from numerous, compact, and gravitationally-bound star clusters. This is especially interesting in light of recent HST and JWST observations that -- aided by the magnifying power of gravitational lenses -- have imaged, at parsec-scale resolution, individual young star clusters in the process of forming in similar galaxies at $z>6$. Because of their low metallicities and high temperatures, star-forming gas clouds in this galaxy have densities $\sim 100$ times higher than typical giant molecular clouds; hence, their star formation efficiencies are high enough ($f_*\sim10-70$ per cent) to produce a sizeable population of potential globular cluster progenitors but typically smaller (between a few $100\:-\: 2\times10^4\:\mathrm{M_{\odot}}$, sizes of $0.1-3$ pc) and of lower metallicities ($10^{-3.5}-10^{-2.5}\:\mathrm{Z_{\odot}}$). The initial mass function of the star-forming clouds is log-normal while the bound star cluster mass function is a power-law with a slope that depends mainly on $f_*$ but also on the temporal proximity to a major starburst. We find slopes between $-0.5$ and $-2.5$ depending on the assumed sub-grid $f_*$. Star formation is self-regulated on galactic scales; however, the multi-modal metallicity distribution of the star clusters and the fraction of stars locked into surviving bound star clusters depends on $f_*$., Comment: 20 pages, 15 figures, submitted to MNRAS. See https://fred144.github.io/research.html for movie renders

We model Pop III star formation in different FUV and X-ray backgrounds, including radiation feedback from protostars. We confirm previous results that a moderate X-ray background increases the number of Pop III systems per unit cosmological volume, but masses and multiplicities of the system are reduced. The stellar mass function also agrees with previous results, and we confirm the outward migration of the stars within the protostellar discs. We find that nearly all Pop III star systems are hierarchical, i.e., binaries of binaries. Typically, two equal-mass stars form near the centre of the protostellar disc and migrate outward. Around these stars, mini-discs fragment forming binaries that also migrate outward. Stars may also form at Lagrange points L4/L5 of the system. Afterward, star formation becomes more stochastic due to the large multiplicity, and zero-metallicity low-mass stars can form when rapidly ejected from the disc. Stars in the disc often have eccentric orbits, leading to a periodic modulation of their accretion rates and luminosities. At the pericenter, due to strong accretion, the star can enter a red-supergiant phase reaching nearly Eddington luminosity in the optical bands ($m_{\rm AB} \sim 34$ for a $100~M_{odot}$ star at $z=6$). During this phase, the star, rather than its nebular lines, can be observed directly by JWST, if sufficiently magnified by a gravitational lens. The $\sim 10,000$ AU separations and high eccentricities of many Pop III star binaries in our simulations are favorable parameters for IMBH mergers - and gravitational waves emission - through orbital excitation by field stars., Comment: Submitted to MNRAS. Movies are available at https://jwpark5064.github.io/ or https://www.youtube.com/@jp_astro_simulation

An autonomous driving system requires a 3D object detector, which must perceive all present road agents reliably to navigate an environment safely. However, real-world driving datasets often suffer from the problem of data imbalance, which causes difficulties in training a model that works well across all classes, resulting in an undesired imbalanced sub-optimal performance. In this work, we propose a method to address this data imbalance problem. Our method consists of two main components: (i) a LiDAR-based 3D object detector with per-class multiple detection heads where losses from each head are modified by dynamic weight average to be balanced. (ii) Contextual ground truth (GT) sampling, where we improve conventional GT sampling techniques by leveraging semantic information to augment point cloud with sampled ground truth GT objects. Our experiment with KITTI and nuScenes datasets confirms our proposed method's effectiveness in dealing with the data imbalance problem, producing better detection accuracy compared to existing approaches., Comment: 10 pages

Disc fragmentation plays an important role in determining the number of primordial stars (Pop III stars), their masses, and hence the initial mass function. In this second paper of a series, we explore the effect of uniform FUV H$_2$-photodissociating and X-ray radiation backgrounds on the formation of Pop~III stars using a grid of high-resolution zoom-in simulations. We find that, in an X-ray background, protostellar discs have lower surface density and higher Toomre $Q$ parameter, so they are more stable. For this reason, X-ray irradiated discs undergo fewer fragmentations and typically produce either binary systems or low-multiplicity systems. In contrast, the cases with weak or no X-ray irradiation produce systems with a typical multiplicity of $6 \pm 3$. In addition, the most massive protostar in each system is smaller by roughly a factor of two when the disc is irradiated by X-rays, due to lower accretion rate. With these two effects combined, the initial mass function of fragments becomes more top-heavy in a strong X-ray background and is well described by a power-law with slope $1.53$ and high-mass cutoff of $61$ M$_\odot$. Without X-rays, we find a slope $0.49$ and cutoff mass of $229$ M$_\odot$. Finally, protostars migrate outward after their formation due to the accretion of high-angular momentum gas from outside and the migration is more frequent and significant in absence of X-ray irradiation.

The first luminous objects forming in the universe produce radiation backgrounds in the FUV and X-ray bands that affect the formation of Population III stars. Using a grid of cosmological hydrodynamics zoom-in simulations, we explore the impact of the Lyman-Warner (LW) and X-ray radiation backgrounds on the critical dark matter halo mass for Population III star formation and the total mass in stars per halo. We find that the LW radiation background lowers the H$_2$ fraction and delays the formation of the Population III stars. On the other hand, X-ray irradiation anticipates the redshift of collapse and reduces the critical halo mass, unless the X-ray background is too strong and gas heating shuts down gas collapse into the halos and prevents star formation. Therefore, an X-ray background can increase the number of dark matter halos forming Population III stars by about a factor of ten, but the total mass in stars forming in each halo is reduced. This is because X-ray radiation increases the molecular fraction and lowers the minimum temperature of the collapsing gas (or equivalently the mass of the quasi-hydrostatic core) and therefore slows down the accretion of the gas onto the central protostar.

Using numerical hydrodynamics code, we perform various idealized galaxy merger simulations to study the star formation (SF) of two merging disk galaxies. Our simulations include gas accretion onto supermassive black holes and active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback. By comparing AGN simulations with those without AGNs, we attempt to understand when the AGN feedback effect is significant. With ~70 simulations, we investigated the SF with the AGN effect in mergers with variety of mass ratios, inclinations, orbits, galaxy structures and morphologies. Using these merger simulations with AGN feedback, we measure merger-driven SF using the burst efficiency parameter introduced by Cox et al. We confirm the previous studies that, in galaxy mergers, AGN suppresses SF more efficiently than in isolated galaxies. However, we additionally find that the effect of AGNs on SF is larger in major mergers than in minor mergers. In minor merger simulations with different primary bulge-to-total ratios, the effect of bulge fraction on the merger-driven SF decreases due to AGN feedback. We create models of Sa, Sb and Sc type galaxies and compare their SF properties while undergoing mergers. With the current AGN prescriptions, the difference in merger-driven SF is not as pronounced as that in the recent observational study of Kaviraj. We discuss the implications of this discrepancy., Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in ApJ

Isolated galaxies in low-density regions are significant in the sense that they are least affected by the hierarchical pattern of galaxy growth, and interactions with perturbers, at least for the last few Gyr. To form a comprehensive picture of the star formation history of isolated galaxies, we constructed a catalog of isolated galaxies and their comparison sample in relatively denser environments. The galaxies are drawn from the SDSS DR7 in the redshift range of $0.025

van Dokkum and Conroy revisited the unexpectedly strong Na I lines at 8200 A found in some giant elliptical galaxies and interpreted it as evidence for unusually bottom-heavy initial mass function. Jeong et al. later found a large population of galaxies showing equally-extraordinary Na D doublet absorption lines at 5900 A (Na D excess objects: NEOs) and showed that their origins can be different for different types of galaxies. While a Na D excess seems to be related with the interstellar medium (ISM) in late-type galaxies, smooth-looking early-type NEOs show little or no dust extinction and hence no compelling sign of ISM contributions. To further test this finding, we measured the doppler components in the Na D lines. We hypothesized that ISM would have a better (albeit not definite) chance of showing a blueshift doppler departure from the bulk of the stellar population due to outflow caused by either star formation or AGN activities. Many of the late-type NEOs clearly show blueshift in their Na D lines, which is consistent with the former interpretation that the Na D excess found in them is related with star formation-caused gas outflow. On the contrary, smooth-looking early-type NEOs do not show any notable doppler component, which is also consistent with the interpretation of Jeong et al. that the Na D excess in early-type NEOs is likely not related with ISM activities but is purely stellar in origin.

In this study, we have investigated empirically the effects of market properties on the degree of diversification of investment weights among stocks in a portfolio. The weights of stocks within a portfolio were determined on the basis of Markowitz's portfolio theory. We identified that there was a negative relationship between the influence of market properties and the degree of diversification of the weights among stocks in a portfolio. Furthermore, we noted that the random matrix theory method could control the properties of correlation matrix between stocks; this may be useful in improving portfolio management for practical application.

This study was investigated to understand the in-depth features and processes of physicists' scientific inquiries. At first, research motives were investigated by interviewing six physicists who were prominent worldwide. As a result, three main types - incompleteness, discovery, and conflict - and nine subtypes of research motivation, were identified. Six additional background factors were found which might affect the design and start of research. Based on these findings, implications for teaching scientific inquiries to students were discussed., Comment: 17 pages, 2 Figures

We study the annulus amplitudes of (p,q) minimal string theory. Focusing on the ZZ-FZZT annulus amplitude as a target-space probe of the ZZ brane, we use it to confirm that the ZZ branes are localized in the strong-coupling region. Along the way we learn that the ZZ-FZZT open strings are fermions, even though our theory is bosonic! We also provide a geometrical interpretation of the annulus amplitudes in terms of the Riemann surface M_{p,q} that emerges from the FZZT branes. The ZZ-FZZT annulus amplitude measures the deformation of M_{p,q} due to the presence of background ZZ branes; each kind of ZZ-brane deforms only one A-period of the surface. Finally, we use the annulus amplitudes to argue that the ZZ branes can be regarded as "wrong-branch" tachyons which violate the bound \alpha

We study open and closed string interactions in the Type IIB plane wave background using open+closed string field theory. We reproduce all string amplitudes from the dual N=2 Sp(N) gauge theory by computing matrix elements of the dilatation operator. A direct diagrammatic correspondence is found between string theory and gauge theory Feynman diagrams. The prefactor and Neumann matrices of open+closed string field theory are separately realized in terms of gauge theory quantities., Comment: 53 pages, 13 figures, references added

We study string interactions among string states with arbitrary impurities in the Type IIB plane wave background using string field theory. We reproduce all string amplitudes from gauge theory by computing matrix elements of the dilatation operator in a previously proposed basis of states. A direct correspondence is found between the string field theory and gauge theory Feynman diagrams., Comment: 51 pages, 8 figures. Some clarifications added, minor typos corrected

We compute string field theory Hamiltonian matrix elements and compare them with matrix elements of the dilatation operator in gauge theory. We get precise agreement between the string field theory and gauge theory computations once the correct cubic Hamiltonian matrix elements in string field theory and a particular basis of states in gauge theory are used. We proceed to compute the matrix elements of the dilatation operator to order g_2^2 in this same basis. This calculation makes a prediction for string field theory Hamiltonian matrix elements to order g_2^2, which have not yet been computed. However, our gauge theory results precisely match the results of the recent computation by Pearson et al. of the order g_2^2 Hamiltonian matrix elements of the string bit model., Comment: 17 pages, Latex. References corrected, clarifications added

We study the string modes in the pp-wave light-cone string field theory. First, we clarify the discrepancy between the Neumann coefficients for the supergravity vertex and the zero mode of the full string one. We also repeat our previous manipulation of the prefactor for the string modes and find that the prefactor reduces to the energy difference of the cos modes minus that of the sin modes. Finally, we discuss off-shell three-string processes., Comment: 12 pages, no figures, LaTeX, v3: eq. (3.13) corrected and conclusion modified accordingly

We use the supergravity modes to clarify the role of the prefactor in the light-cone superstring field theory on PP-wave background. We verify some of the proposals of the recent paper hep-th/0205089 and give further evidence for the correspondence between N=4 SYM gauge theory and string theory on PP-wave. We also consider energy-preserving processes and find that they give vanishing cubic interaction Hamiltonian matrix., Comment: 16+1 pages, no figures, LaTeX (v3: references, minor changes and a clarification about Neumann matrices added; to appear in Physical Review D)

We consider open strings ending on a D5-brane in the pp-wave background, which is realized in the Penrose limit of $AdS_5 \times S^5$ with an $AdS_4\times S^2$ brane. A complete list of gauge invariant operators in the defect conformal field theory is constructed which is dual to the open string states., Comment: 14+1 pages, no figures, LaTex (v2: references added, typos corrected, discussion expanded in section 4)

We use the nonabelian action of N coincident D(-1) branes in constant background fields, in the N $\to \infty$ limit, to construct noncommutative D-brane actions in an arbitrary noncommutative description and comment on tachyon condensation from this perspective., Comment: 11 pages, LaTeX (v2: references added, typos fixed)

We construct boundary states for the AdS_2 D-branes in AdS_3. We show that, in the semi-classical limit, the boundary states correctly reproduce geometric configurations of these branes. We use the boundary states to compute the one loop free energy of open string stretched between the branes. The result agrees precisely with the open string computation in hep-th/0106129., Comment: 22 pages, LaTeX

We study the spectrum of open strings on AdS_2 branes in AdS_3 in an NS-NS background, using the SL(2,R) WZW model. When the brane carries no fundamental string charge, the open string spectrum is the holomorphic square root of the spectrum of closed strings in AdS_3. It contains short and long strings, and is invariant under spectral flow. When the brane carries fundamental string charge, the open string spectrum again contains short and long strings in all winding sectors. However, branes with fundamental string charge break half the spectral flow symmetry. This has different implications for short and long strings. As the fundamental string charge increases, the brane approaches the boundary of AdS_3. In this limit, the induced electric field on the worldvolume reaches its critical value, producing noncommutative open string theory on AdS_2., Comment: 51 pages, 8 figures; v2: references added, typos corrected