Kevin Vora

Carlo da Cunha, Nobuyuki Aoki, David Ferry et al.

In the realm of quantum-effect devices and materials, two-dimensional electron gases (2DEGs) stand as fundamental structures that promise transformative technologies. However, the presence of impurities and defects in 2DEGs poses substantial challenges, impacting carrier mobility, conductivity, and quantum coherence time. To address this, we harness the power of scanning gate microscopy (SGM) and employ three distinct machine learning techniques to estimate the background potential of 2DEGs from SGM data: image-to-image translation using generative adversarial neural networks, cellular neural network, and evolutionary search. Our findings, despite data constraints, highlight the effectiveness of an evolutionary search algorithm in this context, offering a novel approach for defect analysis. This work not only advances our understanding of 2DEGs but also underscores the potential of machine learning in probing quantum materials, with implications for quantum computing and nanoelectronics.

Kevin Vora, Yu Zhang

In this paper, we propose a new solution to reward adaptation (RA) in reinforcement learning, where the agent adapts to a target reward function based on one or more existing source behaviors learned a priori under the same domain dynamics but different reward functions. While learning the target behavior from scratch is possible, it is often inefficient given the available source behaviors. Our work introduces a new approach to RA through the manipulation of Q-functions. Assuming the target reward function is a known function of the source reward functions, we compute bounds on the Q-function and present an iterative process (akin to value iteration) to tighten these bounds. Such bounds enable action pruning in the target domain before learning even starts. We refer to this method as "Q-Manipulation" (Q-M). The iteration process assumes access to a lite-model, which is easy to provide or learn. We formally prove that Q-M, under discrete domains, does not affect the optimality of the returned policy and show that it is provably efficient in terms of sample complexity in a probabilistic sense. Q-M is evaluated in a variety of synthetic and simulation domains to demonstrate its effectiveness, generalizability, and practicality.