Engineering Papers⌕ Search

Engineering topics

Chen, Siyuan

Publications and source records attributed to Chen, Siyuan.

A Generation-Storage Coordination Dispatch Strategy for Power System Based on Causal Reinforcement Learning

In the backdrop of global energy transformation, power systems integrating high proportions of renewable energy sources are facing unprecedented challenges in operational stability and dispatch efficiency. To address these challenges, this study introduces a generation-storage coordination real-time dispatch strategy based on Causal Power System Dynamic Reinforcement Learning (CPSDRL). Diverging from traditional reinforcement learning approaches, CPSDRL innovatively incorporates causal inference within the state prediction model - the crux of model-based reinforcement learning - thereby establishing the Power Causal Dynamic Model (PCDM). Assisted by the prior knowledge of power systems, the model significantly enhances prediction accuracy and reliability through a two-stage training process. Utilizing PCDM, this study further applies a direct policy search algorithm to optimize the real-time dispatch strategy. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method improves the stability of generation-storage coordination real-time dispatch and exhibits competitive advantages in sample efficiency and computational speed, compared to traditional model-based and model-free reinforcement learning algorithms. This method is expected to enhance the practicality and adaptability of causal reinforcement learning techniques in power system scheduling and control.

causal reinforcement learning↗

The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Search for Signals from New Physics

The 15 yr pulsar timing data set collected by the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) shows positive evidence for the presence of a low-frequency gravitational-wave (GW) background. In this paper, we investigate potential cosmological interpretations of this signal, specifically cosmic inflation, scalar-induced GWs, first-order phase transitions, cosmic strings, and domain walls. We find that, with the exception of stable cosmic strings of field theory origin, all these models can reproduce the observed signal. When compared to the standard interpretation in terms of inspiraling supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs), many cosmological models seem to provide a better fit resulting in Bayes factors in the range from 10 to 100. However, these results strongly depend on modeling assumptions about the cosmic SMBHB population and, at this stage, should not be regarded as evidence for new physics. Furthermore, we identify excluded parameter regions where the predicted GW signal from cosmological sources significantly exceeds the NANOGrav signal. These parameter constraints are independent of the origin of the NANOGrav signal and illustrate how pulsar timing data provide a new way to constrain the parameter space of these models. Finally, we search for deterministic signals produced by models of ultralight dark matter (ULDM) and dark matter substructures in the Milky Way. We find no evidence for either of these signals and thus report updated constraints on these models. In the case of ULDM, these constraints outperform torsion balance and atomic clock constraints for ULDM coupled to electrons, muons, or gluons.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Computation of forces and stresses in solids: Towards accurate structural optimization with auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo

The accurate computation of forces and other energy derivatives has been a long-standing challenge for quantum Monte Carlo methods. A number of technical obstacles contribute to this challenge. We discuss how these obstacles can be removed with the auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo (AFQMC) approach. AFQMC is a general, high-accuracy, many-body total-energy method for molecules and solids. The implementation of back-propagation for pure estimators allows direct calculation of gradients of the energy via the Hellmann-Feynman theorem. A planewave basis with norm-conserving pseudopotentials is used for the study of periodic bulk materials. Completeness of the planewave basis minimizes the effect of so-called Pulay terms. The ionic pseudopotentials, which can be incorporated in AFQMC in exactly the same manner as in standard independent-electron methods, regulate the force and stress estimators and eliminate any potential divergence of the Monte Carlo variances. The resulting approach allows applications of full geometry optimizations in bulk materials. As a result, it also paves the way for many-body computations of the phonon spectrum in solids.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Accurate Kohn-Sham auxiliary system from the ground-state density of solids

The Kohn-Sham (KS) system is an auxiliary system whose effective potential is unknown in most cases. It is in principle determined by the ground-state density and it has been found numerically for some low-dimensional systems by inverting the KS equations starting from a given accurate density. For solids, only approximate results are available. In this work, we determine accurate exchange-correlation (xc) potentials for Si and NaCl using the ground-state densities obtained from auxiliary field quantum Monte Carlo calculations. We show that these xc potentials can be rationalized as an ensemble of a few local functions of the density, whose form depends on the specific environment and can be well characterized by the gradient of the density and the local kinetic energy density. Further, the KS band structure can be obtained with high accuracy. The true KS band gap turns out to be larger than the prediction of the local density approximation, but significantly smaller than the measurable photoemission gap, which confirms previous estimates. Finally, our findings show that the conjecture that very different xc potentials can lead to very similar densities and other KS observables is true also in solids, which questions the meaning of details of the potentials and, at the same time, confirms the stability of the KS system.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Enhanced Oblique Decision Tree Enabled Policy Extraction for Deep Reinforcement Learning in Power System Emergency Control

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) algorithms have successfully solved many challenging problems in various power system control scenarios. However, their decision-making process is usually regarded as black-boxes. Furthermore, how DRL models interact with human intelligence remains an open problem. Thus, this paper proposes a policy extraction framework to extract a complex DRL model into an explainable policy. This framework includes three parts: 1) DRL training and data generation. We train an agent for a specific control task and generate data, which contains the control policy of the agent. 2) Policy extraction. We propose an information gain rate based weighted oblique decision tree (IGR-WODT) for DRL policy extraction. 3) Policy evaluation. We define three metrics to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach. A case study for the under-voltage load shedding problem shows that the IGR-WODT presents a performance enhancement compared with DRL, weighted oblique decision tree, and univariate decision tree. The proposed policy extraction method could provide an intuitive explanation of the neural network decision-making process to the dispatchers when making final decisions on power grid operation. Also, the resulted rule-based controller could replace the deep neural network-based controller in many field edge devices with limited computing resources, providing comparable performance.

deep reinforcement learning↗

Searching for Gravitational Waves from Cosmological Phase Transitions with the NANOGrav 12.5-Year Dataset

We search for a first-order phase transition gravitational wave signal in 45 pulsars from the NANOGrav 12.5-year dataset. We find that the data can be modeled in terms of a strong first order phase transition taking place at temperatures below the electroweak scale. However, we do not observe any strong preference for a phase-transition interpretation of the signal over the standard astrophysical interpretation in terms of supermassive black hole mergers; but we expect to gain additional discriminating power with future datasets, improving the signal to noise ratio and extending the sensitivity window to lower frequencies. An interesting open question is how well gravitational wave observatories could separate such signals.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Blockchain Enabled Intelligence of Federated Systems (BELIEFS): An attack-tolerant trustable distributed intelligence paradigm

In this article, a Blockchain Enabled Intelligence of Federated Systems (BELIEFS) is proposed to conduct cooperative control for the multi-regional large-scale power system with a multi-agents system (MAS). By establishing a two levels blockchain, each regional AI agent can simultaneously manage intra-regional controllers and cooperate with other AI agents. Under the consensus mechanism, the agents, which respectively conducted distributed deep reinforcement learning (DDRL) algorithm in multi-regions, can have the tolerant capability of malicious attacks in their training process. The demonstration of the proposed approach is within a multi-regional large-scale interconnected power system. Under the mode of "centralized dispatching and hierarchical management", this article aims to definite a mathematical model to deal with the control problem of the power systems. With the comparison experiments, the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed method in the training process are verified. In addition, malicious attacks are set on the main chain and shard chains to verify the attack-tolerant capability. We expect that such approach and results can suggest a new paradigm of attack-tolerant trustable distributed AI deployment.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Ab initio electronic density in solids by many-body plane-wave auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo calculations

We present accurate many-body results of the electronic densities in several solid materials, including Si, NaCl, and Cu. These results are obtained using the ab initio auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo (AFQMC) method working in a plane-wave basis with norm-conserving, multiple-projector pseudopotentials. AFQMC has been shown to be an excellent many-body total energy method. Computation of observables and correlation functions other than the ground-state energy requires back-propagation, whose adaption and implementation in the plane-wave basis AFQMC framework are discussed in the present paper. This development allows us to compute correlation functions, electronic densities, and interatomic forces, paving the way for geometry optimizations and calculations of thermodynamic properties in solids. Finite supercell size effects are considerably more subtle in the many-body framework than in independent-electron calculations. We analyze the convergence of the electronic density, and obtain best estimates for the thermodynamic limit. The densities from several typical density functionals are benchmarked against our near-exact results. The electronic densities we obtained can also be used to help construct improved density functionals.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗