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Thursday 6 August

Information Theory · Cross-listed from cs.AI

GSBF: Gaussian Splatting for Environment-Aware Beamforming

Beamforming plays a key role in multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems. However, conventional beamforming design normally requires accurate instantaneous channel state information (CSI) and iterative optimization, which incur substantial pilot overhead and computational complexity. Recognizing that radio propagation is intrinsically governed by the physical geometry, we develop a 3D Gaussian splatting for environment-aware beamforming (GSBF) pipeline based on multi-modal data, which characterizes the environment through a persistent 3D Gaussian representation. Specifically, GSBF models the environmental scattering response with reciprocity-preserving bidirectional spherical Gaussian (Bi-SG) kernels and performs two-sided electromagnetic rasterization to render an angular propagator map. The rendered map is then aggregated through an over-complete array-manifold dictionary and projected to the constant-modulus beamformers, thereby synthesizing beams directly from the access point (AP) pose and user position without online instantaneous CSI. Simulations demonstrate that GSBF consistently outperforms baselines such as exhaustive beam alignment (EBA) with lower latency.
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All authors Yijie Bian, Wei Guo, Zixin Wang, Shenghui Song, Jun Zhang, Khaled B. Letaief

Information Theory · Cross-listed from quant-ph

Symmetry-guided constructions of absolutely maximally entangled states in five open cases

We give explicit Hermitian self-dual maximum distance separable codes with parameters $[12,6,7]_{25}$, $[18,9,10]_{121}$, and $[18,9,10]_{169}$. The stabilizer construction proves the existence of ${\rm AME}(12,5)$, ${\rm AME}(18,11)$, and ${\rm AME}(18,13)$ states; one-party projection also gives ${\rm AME}(17,11)$ and ${\rm AME}(17,13)$. The first code was found by a direct search. A regular $\mathbb{Z}_3^2$ coordinate orbit of its automorphism group suggested a group-circulant form that reduces each length-eighteen construction to a nine-entry kernel. The printed matrices are certified by exact Hermitian products and complete square-minor enumeration.
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Information Theory

Moment-based linear programming bounds for locally recoverable codes

In this paper we derive new Delsarte-type linear programming bounds for $q$-ary $(r,\delta)$-locally recoverable codes (LRCs) with three attributes: first, the variable set is comparable in size to that of the classical Delsarte LP; second, our LP exploits the higher-order information forced by the local-distance condition through order \(\delta-2\), in the sense that for nondegenerate linear codes, its balanced base part gives exactly the same dimension bound as the symmetrized refined-weight LP of Gruica, Jany, and Ravagnani, while the additional constraints, nonvacuous whenever $\delta \ge 3$, give a further strengthening; and third, it applies to general $(r,\delta)$-LRCs, linear and nonlinear alike. Extensive computations over binary and ternary alphabets show that the convex-hull LP yields improvements not captured by the previous LP and often sharpens the shortening and generalized Singleton bounds.
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Information Theory

Wireless Linear Computation Broadcast

A linear computation broadcast (LCBC) problem comprises $K$ users (receivers) and a transmitter. The users wish to compute various (vector) linear functions of a common dataset, and possess in advance heterogeneous side information corresponding to various other linear computations. The goal for the broadcast transmitter, who knows the dataset and all desired and side-information functions, is to satisfy all demands as efficiently as possible. Prior work has explored the information-theoretic capacity of LCBC for zero-error finite-field computation over an ideal (noiseless) broadcast channel (BC). This paper develops a wireless LCBC (WLCBC) framework for the Gaussian MIMO BC with noisy receiver-side information under a transmit power constraint and arbitrary antenna configurations. In the WLCBC setting, a Gaussian source is linearly precoded for broadcast; each user requests a linear function of the source and forms an estimate by linearly combining its channel observation with its noisy side information. Assuming perfect channel state information, we cast the centralized joint linear transceiver design as a weighted sum-MSE minimization problem and propose an efficient alternating optimization algorithm. For a fixed precoder, the optimal decoders are the linear minimum mean-square error (LMMSE) estimators. For fixed decoders, the precoder update reduces to a convex quadratically constrained quadratic program which leads to a semi-closed-form solution parameterized by a single dual variable. The resulting algorithm guarantees a monotonic decrease in the objective and convergence of the weighted sum-MSE (WSMSE) objective sequence. Simulations demonstrate pronounced robustness gains over natural baselines obtained from prior works.
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Information Theory · Cross-listed from quant-ph

Beyond transversality: structure of Clifford circuits for CSS codes

We characterize four groups of Clifford circuits for Calderbank–Shor–Steane (CSS) codes that are relevant to fault-tolerant logical operations. First, we show that every code-preserving Clifford circuit is a product of Z-diagonal circuits, composed of S and CZ gates, and their X-basis analogues. Second, we define the two-fold transversal group, generated by depth-one two-local code-preserving circuits, and show that each of its elements can be expressed as a product of layers consisting of either Z-diagonal, X-diagonal, or CNOT gates. As a corollary, every transversal gate is a product of three transversal diagonal circuits; for connected non-self-dual codes, two such circuits suffice. We further show that every code-preserving automorphism circuit, consisting of single-qubit Clifford gates and permutations, has a normal form comprising a Hadamard layer, a permutation, and two diagonal circuits. We also define a two-fold automorphism group, in which a depth-one two-local circuit may be code-preserving up to a permutation, and show that its logical image can be larger than that of the two-fold transversal group. For 231 CSS codes, we provide explicit generators and determine the logical image of the two-fold transversal group. We tabulate 173 codes whose full logical Clifford group is generated by two-fold-transversal circuits, including codes of distances 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 13, with respective best rates 2/5, 3/4, 34/77, 17/28, 14/25, 1/27, 3/56, and 1/33. We construct families of CSS codes from bipartite grids, cut-complements, and quadrics, and census the self-dual codes invariant under rank-3 permutation groups. Many of these codes realize the full logical Clifford group in this way.
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Information Theory

Maximal achievable service rates of some classes of linear codes

In this paper, we investigate lower bounds on the maximum achievable service rates for data symbols in certain classes of linear codes, including cyclic codes and low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, that are derived from combinatorial structures such as $t$-designs, difference sets, and balanced incomplete block designs (BIBDs). We first establish a lower bound on the maximum achievable service rate for each data symbol in the following two cases: (i) systematic linear codes $C$ under the assumption that the supports of codewords of a fixed weight in $C^\perp$ form a BIBD, and (ii) non-systematic binary codes under the assumption that the supports of codewords of a fixed weight in $C^\perp$ form a $t$-design. We then investigate the linear codes obtained from the incidence matrices of BIBDs, particularly certain classes of BIBD-LDPC codes, and show how the parameters of the underlying designs can be exploited to determine lower bounds on the maximum achievable service rates for the data symbols of the corresponding linear code. In addition, we analyze the maximum achievable service rates of systematic extended linear codes. We show that the existence of a symmetric BIBD (SBIBD) corresponding to a dual codeword can be used to derive a lower bound on the maximum achievable service rate of the associated systematic cyclic code. We also present some families of cyclic codes constructed from difference sets and obtain explicit lower bounds on the maximum achievable service rates for their data symbols. In particular, we determine the exact values of the maximum achievable service rates for each data symbol of cyclic codes arising from Singer difference sets.
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Information Theory

An Ordered-Reliability-Bits Chase Decoding Algorithm for BCH Codes

In this paper, we propose a low-complexity ordered-reliability-bits Chase (ORB-Chase) decoding algorithm for BCH codes. The proposed algorithm differs from the traditional Chase algorithm in two key aspects. First, it employs the logical weight as a metric to generate test error patterns (TEPs). Second, it introduces an integer-based early termination criterion that ensures computation can stop at the earliest possible stage if the maximum-likelihood codeword is identified, thereby minimizing unnecessary computational effort. Simulation results for (127, 113, 5) BCH codes and (256, 239, 6) eBCH codes demonstrate that the ORB-Chase algorithm achieves near-ML performance with significantly fewer test patterns compared to the Chase algorithm. Moreover, the average number of Berlekamp-Massey (BM) decoding calls decreases rapidly as $E_b / N_0$ increases, achieving a reduction of up to 98.1% compared to the Chase algorithm at the same BLER performance.
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Wednesday 5 August

Information Theory · Cross-listed from math.LO

Sequential-Innovation Reducibility and the Innovation Spectrum

Sequential prediction naturally induces an innovation sequence consisting of the prediction errors produced by a causal predictor. We use the collection of all such innovation sequences to define the innovation spectrum of an individual binary sequence and, from it, a new reducibility based on sequential information extraction. We show that this reducibility refines truth-table reducibility while exhibiting a fundamentally different geometry. The degree structure decomposes into two canonical regions: a truth-table spine, whose induced order is isomorphic to the truth-table degrees, and a complementary reservoir-immune region, consisting of sequences from which no infinite computable predictable reservoir can be extracted. We establish bridge constructions connecting the two regions, prove that reservoir immunity is preserved under sequential innovation, and show that the Martin–Löf-random degrees form a proper downward-closed substructure inside the reservoir-immune region. These results reveal a new geometric organization of individual sequences based on causal predictability rather than classical oracle computation.
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Information Theory

Diversity in Coded TE-QKD Channels: Achieving Infinite Diversity out of Finite System Resources

We establish conditions and give proofs on how an error-correcting code can attain infinite diversity in a time-entanglement quantum key distribution (TE-QKD) reconciliation. The shocking result, never encountered in the literature on coding and communication theory, is that a decoder exhibits an infinite diversity order while the channel has finite diversity and the code has a relatively short finite length. This paper studies the diversity order of coded TE-QKD reconciliation, defined by the asymptotic slope of the error probability at high signal-to-noise ratio. For bounded-distance algebraic decoding, we derive a necessary and sufficient condition in terms of the number of photons per codeword and the decoding radius. For soft-decision decoding, we introduce the maximal finite diversity (MFD) property and prove that infinite diversity is achieved if and only if the code is MFD deficient. The infinite diversity in TE-QKD has no counterpart in classical fading channels, where decoding can only multiply a finite diversity order by a finite factor. Examples of short codes based on Golay, Reed-Solomon, Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH), and Reed-Muller codes validate the analysis and illustrate how the TE-QKD system parameters and the relatively short code parameters affect the achievable diversity for both hard and soft information reconciliation.
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Information Theory · Cross-listed from cs.CL

Chained Recursive Language Models for Multi-Iteration Reasoning

Long context reasoning in large language models (LLMs) is usually constrained by the fact that a single inference trajectory has to simultaneously explore the context, store intermediate state, verify evidence, and produce the final answer. This becomes particularly difficult in tasks that require extraction, counting, ordering, or multi-hop reasoning, where an early mistake can propagate until the final response. In this work, we propose Chained Recursive Language Models (Chained RLM), an inference-time architecture, in which the same underlying model is called repeatedly as a sequence of fresh reasoning roots. Each root receives the original problem and context, but does not inherit the full conversational history. Instead, it receives a compact plain-text summary, a plain-text blackboard, and some durable task-specific artifacts written by predecessor roots. The motivation is to manage the context by chopping into partial tasks rather than one large inference response; in each staged computation, intermediate artifacts can be inspected, corrected, and extended by a later fresh inference by the same model. We describe the system model, handoff mechanism, artifact workspace, and evaluation protocol for this system. We study when fresh-context artifact continuation gives a measurable gain in accuracy over direct LLM answering even with recursive tool-calling.
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Information Theory · Cross-listed from cs.CV

UG-UMRE: Uncertainty-Guided Modality Augmentation and Distributional Calibration for Unified Multimodal Relation Extraction

Unified Multimodal Relation Extraction (UMRE) aims to identify intra-modal and cross-modal relations between textual entities and visual objects. However, existing UMRE studies still encounter two critical issues: ignoring inherent aleatoric uncertainty causes noise propagation, and deep-seated heterogeneity between distinct modal distributions hinders alignment. To address these issues, we propose the Uncertainty-Guided UMRE Network (UG-UMRE). Specifically, we design an Uncertainty-Driven Unimodal Augmentation (UDUA) module, which models features as Gaussian distributions based on the Variational Information Bottleneck. By incorporating an uncertainty-aware self-supervised contrastive learning mechanism, UDUA effectively filters out noise while maintaining semantic consistency. Furthermore, we introduce the Joint Aleatoric Uncertainty Alignment (JAUA) module as a global semantic pre-calibration mechanism. JAUA leverages probabilistic distribution consistency to construct a shared latent space, eliminating the distributional gap by synchronizing cross-modal statistical properties, thereby laying a robust foundation for fine-grained interaction. Experiments on three benchmark datasets (UMRE, MORE, and MNRE) demonstrate that UG-UMRE achieves state-of-the-art performance. Further analysis validates the pluggable and effective performance of the proposed UDUA and JAUA modules.
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All authors Bo Kong, Liruiz Jia, Yi Liang, Chao Liu, Dongfang Han, Tianwei Yan, Yuan Liu, Shengquan Liu

Information Theory · Cross-listed from quant-ph

Sharp Continuity of Petz and Sandwiched Rényi Conditional Entropies

We determine the sharp modulus of continuity, in trace distance, of the optimized Petz and sandwiched Rényi conditional entropies for every order $\alpha\in[\frac12,1)$. If two bipartite states are within trace distance $\delta$, then both conditional entropies differ by at most $\frac{1}{1-\alpha} \log[(1-\varepsilon)^{\alpha} +(D-1)^{1-\alpha}\varepsilon^{\alpha}]$, where $\varepsilon := \min\{\delta,1-1/D\}$ and $D$ is the effective dimension, given by the dimension of the first subsystem times the largest possible Schmidt rank. For every distance constraint $\delta\in[0,1]$, the bound is attained by an isotropic pair with a maximally entangled anchor. Taking $\alpha\uparrow1$ recovers the recent sharp continuity bound of quantum conditional entropy by Berta et al. [arXiv:2607.24687]. The proof linearizes the relevant concave Rényi functional at a comparison point dictated by the isotropic equality family. Schmidt-rank domination extends the equality geometry to an arbitrary anchor state, after which trace-distance duality and a noncommutative calibration estimate control the perturbation and anchor term without weakening the sharp constant. The latter estimate requires matrix analysis and is assisted by ChatGPT 5.6 Sol.
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Information Theory

Minimal Binary Linear Codes of Dimension n+4 from Partial Spreads and Their Dual Access Structures

Minimal linear codes have significant applications in secret sharing schemes, secure multi-party computation, and cryptography. In this paper, we propose a generic construction of a new family of minimal binary linear codes with dimension n+4 from a special class of Boolean functions. By leveraging the geometric properties of partial spreads in finite fields, we determine the explicit weight distribution and weight enumerator of the constructed codes. Furthermore, we derive a necessary and sufficient condition for these codes to be minimal, and establish that the proposed family yields minimal codes that structurally violate the well-known Ashikhmin-Barg condition, making them highly desirable for advanced communication systems.
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Information Theory · Cross-listed from math-ph

Multi-frequency far-field data enrichment for electromagnetic source reconstruction

Reconstructing unknown electromagnetic sources from far-field radiation patterns is a fundamental inverse problem with broad applications in biomedical imaging, non-destructive testing, and telecommunications. In practical settings, however, collecting dense multi-frequency far-field measurements at the Nyquist sampling rate is often infeasible. Under-sampled or sparse data introduce non-radiating source components that sever the uniqueness of the solution, creating severe artifacts when standard inversion techniques are applied. To overcome this limitation, we present a two-stage reconstruction strategy exploiting the physical property that compactly supported, geometrically sparse sources exhibit a finite rate of innovations (FRI). In the first stage, we construct an associated wrap-around structured Hankel matrix. By leveraging the low-rank property of the matrix due to FRI of the unknown sources, we enrich the sub-sampled data. To that end, we convert missing multi-frequency far-field data recovery into a constrained matrix completion task solved via Annihilating Filter-based Low-rank Hankel Matrix Completion Approach (ALOHA). In the second stage, a Fourier inversion scheme reconstructs the current source density from the enriched dataset. Extensive numerical evaluations on electromagnetic source models show that our enrichment framework effectively eliminates under-sampling artifacts and resolves non-uniqueness challenges. The method delivers accurate and stable reconstructions under high sub-sampling rates (e.g., with $30$% to $50$% available samples) and strong noise conditions ($10$ dB SNR), outperforming standard $\ell_1$-compressed sensing baselines.
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All authors Atyab Khalifa Al-Shaqsi, Heba Mohammed Al-Subhi, Xianchao Wang, Shujaat Khan, Abdul Wahab

Information Theory

Bernoulli–Strang–Fix Conditions: Approximation and Prediction by Sampling Kantorovich Operators

In this paper, we introduce the Bernoulli–Strang–Fix conditions and their generalized versions for a vector-valued generator $\varphi=(\varphi_0,\dots,\varphi_{\rho-1})$ and a periodic nonuniform sampling set $X$. We use these conditions to establish exact and asymptotic polynomial reproduction properties of sampling Kantorovich operators associated with $(\varphi,X)$ up to a prescribed degree. We analyze the approximation properties and convergence behavior of these operators in detail. Furthermore, we demonstrate their application to signal prediction from a finite number of past local average samples, showing that sampling Kantorovich operators can also serve as effective prediction operators. Finally, we present numerical examples based on Gaussian functions and B-splines to illustrate and validate the theoretical approximation and prediction results.
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Information Theory · Cross-listed from math.CO

The generalized Griesmer and antiGriesmer bounds

We present three proofs of the generalized Griesmer bound together with the corresponding proofs of the generalized antiGriesmer bound. The first proof follows from inequalities relating consecutive minimum and maximum subcode support weights. We also write the projective construction of Tsfasman and Vlăduţ as a residual code argument and express the geometric proof of Kurz, Landjev, and Rousseva in terms of shortened subcodes. In addition, complements in repeated simplex codes show that the two bounds are equivalent. The residual and shortening arguments also determine the consequences of equality for the resulting residual codes and shortened subcodes. Finally, the complement relation transfers known divisibility results for Griesmer codes to antiGriesmer codes.
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Information Theory · Cross-listed from math.OC

Jointly Sparse Blind Deconvolution via Riemannian Optimization

Blind deconvolution has been widely applied in system identification and signal processing. While joint sparsity commonly arises in practical scenarios, effectively exploiting this structure to enhance recovery performance remains a challenging and largely open problem. In this paper, we propose a joint-sparsity-promoting optimization problem and develop a Riemannian optimization algorithm for its accurate and efficient solution. We further establish theoretical guarantees that characterize the non-asymptotic relationship between the estimation error and the sample complexity, showing that exploiting joint sparsity can significantly reduce the sample complexity required for successful recovery. Numerical experiments are provided that validate the theoretical results and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
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All authors Wenlong Wang, Baiyang Guo, Zai Yang, Shixiang Chen, Junpeng Shi

Information Theory · Cross-listed from quant-ph

Information locality of a quantum locally recoverable code

A classical linear code $C$ of length $n$ is said to have symbol locality $(r, \delta)$ if for any index $j$ there exists a repair group $J_j \subseteq \{1, \ldots, n\}$ with $j\in J_j$ and $|J_j| \leq r+\delta-1$ such that any $\delta-1$ or fewer erasures in $J_j$ can be corrected by using codeword symbols only in $J_j$. Later it turned out that this way of defining $r$ overestimates the number of necessary codeword symbols for multiple-erasure correction, and information locality was proposed to define $r$ as the dimension of the punctured code of $C$ onto $J_j$. Recently locality $(r,\delta)$ was proposed for quantum error-correcting codes by following the original definition of symbol locality $(r, \delta)$. We propose a quantum counterpart of the information locality for quantum stabilizer codes constructed by Hermitian orthogonality, and a linear algebraic procedure computing a smaller repair group predicted by the proposed information locality and simultaneously reducing the number of measured observables in decoding to its minimum possible value. Then we demonstrate that the previously proposed definition of quantum locality $(r,\delta)$ has the same drawback of overestimating the number of necessary codeword symbols for erasure correction by providing an explicit example of a quantum stabilizer code. Finally, we will give another example of a quantum stabilizer code constructed by Euclidean orthogonality and two different linear codes, with which a natural translation of the classical information locality into the quantum setting underestimates the number of necessary codeword symbols for erasure correction.
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Tuesday 4 August

Information Theory · Cross-listed from eess.SP

Information-Theoretic Causal Modelling of Semiconductor Process Dynamics

With the progress of the semiconductor industry toward increasingly complex compute devices and tighter process tolerances, advanced process control has become crucial. This work explores a novel framework to infer the underlying dynamics of semiconductor processes, directly from raw equipment log-file time-series data. By modelling the tool dynamics as a stochastic dynamical system comprising (a) a deterministic component and (b) a stochastic component, we estimate entropy transfer rates between variables through the Liang-Kleeman and Pires formalism. Preliminary results indicated that 7.5% of the inferred dependencies were known, 36.0% were plausible, 17.5% represented previously uncharacterised relationships, and 39.0% were inconsistent with established process knowledge. These findings demonstrate the framework's capability to uncover novel causal insights, while motivating further improvements to reduce inconsistent findings.
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All authors Daniel Sørensen, Giorgio Melchiorre, Sudip Bandyopadhyay, Sandip Halder, Roel Wuyts, Bappaditya Dey

Information Theory · Cross-listed from cs.CL

Diffuse to Compress: Leveraging Diffusion LMs for Lossless Compression

We study the problem of lossless text compression, motivated by the rapid growth in the collection and storage of digital textual data - including plain text, source code, and structured formats such as XML - and by recent advances in neural language model-based compression. In particular, recent LLM-based approaches, whether built on symbol-ranking pipelines or paired with a statistical compressor, have demonstrated compression ratios significantly superior to general-purpose compressors such as zstd, gzip, or bzip on text and code. However, these neural approaches suffer from severe throughput limitations, making them not yet practically usable. For the first time in the context of lossless neural text compression, we introduce Diffusion Language Models (DLMs) as an alternative inference paradigm to autoregressive LLM-based approaches. We argue that replacing autoregressive LLMs with DLMs within the same compression framework could overcome the throughput bottleneck caused by their one-symbol-per-step limitation. However, achieving these improvements requires addressing algorithmic challenges introduced by applying DLMs to lossless compression, where the architecture allows the number and positions of symbols encoded at each forward pass to be decided independently. We design efficient and effective strategies to solve these challenges and evaluate them experimentally against LLM-based and general-purpose compressors on enwik8, a well-established textual benchmark. Our results show that the newly proposed DLM-based framework advances the state of the art in lossless text compression. Moreover, as DLMs are still a relatively young paradigm, recent advances toward increasingly capable and efficient models suggest substantial room for further improvements.
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Information Theory

Dimension Rigidity and Projective Geometry of Trace-Product Switchings of the Gold Cube

We completely classify a natural scalar trace-product switching of the Gold almost perfect nonlinear function $x\mapsto x^3$ in every even dimension. Nontrivial switchings occur only for $n=4,6,8$: the admissible coefficients are, respectively, the nonzero trace-zero elements, the six elements of multiplicative order nine, and $\mathbb{F}_4^{*}$. For every even $n\geq10$, no nonzero coefficient is admissible. The infinite range is excluded by additive-character estimates on a Fermat cubic, with exact finite bridges for $n=10,12$. The raw coefficient lists for $n=6,8$ appeared earlier in Arshad's dissertation; our contribution is their intrinsic description, a proof uniform in the dimension, and the resulting dimension-rigidity theorem. We also classify normalized rank-two extensions in dimension eight by $\mathbb{P}^{1}(\mathbb{F}_4)$. A binary trace selector accepts two coefficient values at each non-base projective point, and the eight accepted marked switchings form exactly two extended-affine, hence two CCZ, classes. A centre-independent low-rank derivative criterion reduces each rank-$r$ candidate to $2^r-1$ membership tests in precomputed forbidden sets. The global APN classes reached are known; the results describe their local organization around the Gold centre and rule out this switching mechanism in all larger even dimensions.
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Information Theory · Cross-listed from cs.CC

Zero-error information equals amortized communication complexity

The direct sum problem in computational complexity asks whether solving $n$ independent instances of a computational task inherently requires $n$ times the resources needed to solve a single instance. In this paper, we resolve a central form of the direct sum conjecture in randomized communication complexity. Specifically, we prove that the "amortized expected randomized communication complexity" of any function is exactly equal to its "zero-error information complexity"—a measure of the precise amount of information the communicating parties must reveal about their inputs to compute the function without error. This result also provides a tight characterization of the amortized "worst-case" randomized communication complexity up to a constant factor. To achieve our exact characterization, we introduce a new single-instance protocol embedding equipped with a prefix-verification mechanism to accurately localize global errors. Furthermore, we apply our new structural theorems to the fundamental Set-Disjointness problem. Our resulting exact asymptotic bounds for Set-Disjointness successfully refute a conjecture in DFHL18 regarding its scaling behavior.
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Information Theory

Geometry-Informed Optimization of Binary RIS Configurations for Communication and Sensing

Practical Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs) often support only a small number of phase states, making their configuration inherently discrete. For a 1-bit RIS with $N$ elements, direct optimization requires searching among $2^N$ binary configurations. This work shows that this exponential configuration space is not unstructured. By reformulating 1-bit RIS optimization as the maximization of the norm of a signed sum of channel-dependent vectors, we prove that every globally optimal configuration must be induced by the signs of their projections onto a common direction. This geometric characterization restricts the class of configurations that can contain global optima and leads to different algorithmic consequences depending on the signal-space dimension. For general Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems, we develop a geometry-informed sampling method that evaluates only structurally admissible configurations. For Single-Input-Single-Output (SISO) systems, the same principle reduces to a two-dimensional angular partition, allowing the complete candidate set to be characterized and the global optimum to be recovered through polynomial-time enumeration, by evaluating at most $N+1$ out of the $2^N$ configurations. Finally, we apply the same binary optimization principle to an Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) scenario, where communication enhancement and target localization reduce to the same underlying geometric problem. The proposed framework therefore provides a unified approach for exploiting the structure of practical 1-bit RIS configurations across communication and sensing functionalities.
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All authors Angelos Gkekas, Alexandros I. Papadopoulos, Petros Andreas Pantazopoulos, Antonios Lalas, Konstantinos Votis, Christos Liaskos

Information Theory · Cross-listed from cs.LG

Spend Bits Where Queries Look: KV Cache Vector Quantization with Attention-Preserving Transforms

Long-context LLM decoding reads the key-value (KV) cache at every step. Loading it takes longer than computing attention over it, so throughput is bandwidth-bound. Hence, reducing the cache size can raise both decoding speed and serving capacity. The challenge is to reduce cache size while preserving the attention products, keeping reconstruction cheap, and using a fixed per-token bit count. At two bits per element, the most competitive methods rely on orthogonal transforms. However, existing techniques are either data-oblivious or use the query statistics without deriving the transform from a distortion criterion. Moreover, they rely on transforms built on top of random or Hadamard rotations, which equalize variances across entries rather than compacting energy, and fixed-width scalar quantizers, which are suboptimal at low rates. In this paper, we formulate KV cache quantization as a transform coding problem in which distortion is the error in the attention products. We derive closed-form optimal transforms for keys and values from calibration statistics, under a high-resolution model. We show that the optimal key transform is not orthogonal and satisfies a generalized Parseval relation: the attention-aware distortion becomes mean-squared error (MSE) in the transform domain. Thus, we can use MSE-optimal vector quantizers applied directly to the transformed key coefficients. To meet the fixed-width layout requirement, we show that grouping coefficients into equal-volume partitions makes equal-size codebooks attain the variable-rate optimum under the same high-resolution model. At two bits per element, our method, termed NOVA-KV, recovers most of the long-context retrieval accuracy lost by scalar quantization methods at comparable throughput.
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All authors Samuel Fernández-Menduiña, Amir Ziashahabi, Eduardo Pavez, Antonio Ortega, Salman Avestimehr

Information Theory

Tail-Calibrated Soft-Output GRAND for Finite-Memory Noise-Effect Posteriors

In guessing random additive noise decoding (GRAND), memory in the hard-decision noise effect changes the likelihood order of candidate noise effects. In soft-output decoding, the same memory also affects the finite-block quantity determining the missing-list probability: the codebook-restricted posterior mass outside the current list. Existing correlation-aware GRAND methods exploit local dependence without interleaving, but their stopping and soft-output rules are not derived from finite-memory posterior tails. Soft-output GRAND (SOGRAND) derives random-codebook a posteriori probability (APP) estimates for GRAND lists, but does not provide finite-memory algorithms for posterior weights, partition functions, tail masses, or bitwise tail marginals for correlated noise-effect posteriors. We introduce Tail-Calibrated SOGRAND for binary additive channels whose ambient hard-decision noise-effect posterior, conditioned on received soft information, is represented by a finite-memory energy. The decoder enumerates candidate noise effects in nondecreasing posterior energy, queries codebook membership as in GRAND, computes posterior weights and tail masses by finite-state recursions, and estimates the unqueried codebook-restricted denominator as $p_qT_q$, where $T_q$ is the ambient posterior tail mass and $p_q$ is the remaining random-codebook occupancy probability. With exact enumeration and no abandonment, the first listed codeword is ML under the likelihood model defining the posterior energy. We also prove an ambient posterior-tail abandonment bound and, separately, conditional unbiasedness, variance, and concentration bounds for the random-codebook missing-list estimator. The same posterior-tail decomposition gives blockwise APP estimates, missing-list probabilities, and bitwise APP log-likelihood ratios (LLRs) for finite-memory noise-effect posteriors.
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Information Theory · Cross-listed from quant-ph

Unifying quantum measurement constructions via a relative-entropy minimum change principle

The minimum change principle provides an information-theoretic characterization of the Bayes reversal channel in classical probability theory and has recently been proposed as a framework for extending Bayes' rule to quantum information theory. Using quantum relative entropy, we investigate a minimum change principle for the setting of quantum statistical inference. Specifically, we consider a forward process based on a classical-to-quantum preparation channel and a reverse process based on a quantum-to-classical measurement channel. We establish a closed-form characterization of measurements that are optimal for this principle, and this optimal measurement can be found via a dual formulation involving a single unconstrained Hermitian variable. This perspective allows us to recover some notable measurements within the same framework, including pretty good measurements and Fermi-Dirac thermal measurements, and we use it to discover a novel family that we call softmin thermal measurements. We further show that softmin thermal measurements arise as optimal solutions to entropy-regularized semidefinite optimization problems, demonstrating that they play a role for measurements analogous to that of thermal states in statistical mechanics. Finally, we prove an additivity property for the relative-entropy minimum change principle and investigate the performance of Fermi-Dirac thermal measurements for quantum hypothesis testing.
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Information Theory · Cross-listed from stat.ML

Robust Low-Tubal-Rank Tensor Completion under Cross-Concentrated Sampling

Tensor cross-concentrated sampling (t-CCS) bridges entrywise sampling and t-CUR slice-wise sampling by observing entries only within selected horizontal and lateral slices. Existing t-CCS completion methods, however, assume that the observations are free of gross corruption. In this work, we study robust recovery of a third-order low-tubal-rank tensor from partial t-CCS observations contaminated by sparse, arbitrarily large outliers. We propose Robust Iterative t-CUR (R-ItCUR), a tensor-native algorithm that partitions the sampled tensor cross into two exterior blocks and an intersection block, applies adaptive blockwise Welsch correction for outlier suppression, and updates the low-rank component through projected blockwise gradient descent. By operating directly on the sampled cross, R-ItCUR avoids reconstructing the full tensor throughout the iterations, resulting in substantial memory and computational savings. Experiments on synthetic tensors, cardiac MRI data, and three-dimensional seismic data demonstrate accurate recovery and strong robustness to sparse gross corruptions. The results further highlight the importance of explicitly exploiting the cross-concentrated sampling structure in robust tensor completion.
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All authors HanQin Cai, Longxiu Huang, Jing Qin, Chengyue Wu

Information Theory

Structured-Sparsity-Aware Joint User Activity Detection and Channel Estimation for OTFS-Based Grant-Free Random Access

Grant-free random access (GFRA) is a promising solution for massive machine-type communications (mMTC) in future wireless networks. However, reliable user activity detection and channel estimation are critical challenges, particularly when orthogonal time-frequency space (OTFS) modulation is integrated with GFRA to address doubly selective channels induced by high mobility. In this paper, we propose an OTFS-based GFRA framework that exploits the inherent structured sparsity of delay-Doppler channels. By adopting a basis expansion model (BEM), we formulate joint user activity detection and channel estimation as a structured compressive sensing problem. A bi-level sparsity structure is identified, consisting of common sparsity across multiple receive antennas and activation sparsity across mMTC users. To effectively leverage this structure, we construct a two-layer factor graph and develop a structured sparsity expectation propagation (SS-EP) algorithm for efficient Bayesian inference. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme significantly outperforms existing benchmarks.
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All authors Yao Ge, Yirui Luo, Yuhao Chi, Yufei Zhao, Yong Liang Guan, David González G., Zhi Ding

Information Theory

Power Minimization under Quality of Service Constraints for MIMO Systems with a RIS-based Transmitter

This study investigates a virtual multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) system with PSK modulation, realized with a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-based transmitter. The study focuses on minimizing transmit power under quality-of-service (QoS) constraints while addressing the associated computational complexity. A discrete phase-shift RIS model is considered, and the power minimization problem is formulated in two scenarios. First, for QPSK user data, the symbol-error probability (SEP) is adopted as the QoS criterion. Second, for general $M$-PSK modulation, the union-bound SEP (UBSEP) is used to define the QoS constraints. Based on the considered formulations, a partial branch-and-bound (PBB) approach is developed, which improves on full branch-and-bound (FBB) methods in the sense of allowing for favorable complexity performance trade-offs. For the special case of high-resolution RIS, the discrete phase-shift set is approximated by its continuous counterpart, enabling the reformulation of the original problems as constrained optimizations on an oblique manifold, which are solved with reduced computational complexity with the proposed bisection method. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches in minimizing the transmit power for different SEP requirements and showcase the balance between power efficiency and computational complexity
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Information Theory

Predictive Triggering for Outage-Resilient Threshold Decisions over Short-Packet Links

Remote threshold decisions require more than accurate state estimates: the posterior must support reliable alarm/no-alarm decisions and, when possible, anticipate early critical decisions. We study this problem over short-packet wireless links with outage risk. We derive false-positive/false-negative feasibility conditions that define a decision-feasible region of the estimation and yield a predictive decision-update trigger. To protect predictive updates from outages, we add AoI-controlled resilience updates that both detect disruptions and maintain freshness. A two-state Markov surrogate of the thresholded process, matched to its one-step switching statistics, enables tractable long-term reliability-energy analysis. Then, we jointly optimized transmit power and AoI-controlled resilience update probabilities. Simulations show earlier, reliable decisions at competitive energy with baselines.
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