🍩 Database of Original & Non-Theoretical Uses of Topology

(found 2 matches in 0.001008s)

  1. Topological Detection of Trojaned Neural Networks (2021)

    Songzhu Zheng, Yikai Zhang, Hubert Wagner, Mayank Goswami, Chao Chen
    Abstract Deep neural networks are known to have security issues. One particular threat is the Trojan attack. It occurs when the attackers stealthily manipulate the model’s behavior through Trojaned training samples, which can later be exploited. Guided by basic neuroscientific principles, we discover subtle – yet critical – structural deviation characterizing Trojaned models. In our analysis we use topological tools. They allow us to model high-order dependencies in the networks, robustly compare different networks, and localize structural abnormalities. One interesting observation is that Trojaned models develop short-cuts from shallow to deep layers. Inspired by these observations, we devise a strategy for robust detection of Trojaned models. Compared to standard baselines it displays better performance on multiple benchmarks.

  2. Unexpected Topology of the Temperature Fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background (2019)

    Pratyush Pranav, Robert J. Adler, Thomas Buchert, Herbert Edelsbrunner, Bernard J. T. Jones, Armin Schwartzman, Hubert Wagner, Rien van de Weygaert
    Abstract We study the topology generated by the temperature fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, as quantified by the number of components and holes, formally given by the Betti numbers, in the growing excursion sets. We compare CMB maps observed by the \textlessi\textgreaterPlanck\textlessi/\textgreater satellite with a thousand simulated maps generated according to the ΛCDM paradigm with Gaussian distributed fluctuations. The comparison is multi-scale, being performed on a sequence of degraded maps with mean pixel separation ranging from 0.05 to 7.33°. The survey of the CMB over 𝕊\textlesssup\textgreater2\textlesssup/\textgreater is incomplete due to obfuscation effects by bright point sources and other extended foreground objects like our own galaxy. To deal with such situations, where analysis in the presence of “masks” is of importance, we introduce the concept of relative homology. The parametric \textlessi\textgreaterχ\textlessi/\textgreater\textlesssup\textgreater2\textlesssup/\textgreater-test shows differences between observations and simulations, yielding \textlessi\textgreaterp\textlessi/\textgreater-values at percent to less than permil levels roughly between 2 and 7°, with the difference in the number of components and holes peaking at more than 3\textlessi\textgreaterσ\textlessi/\textgreater sporadically at these scales. The highest observed deviation between the observations and simulations for \textlessi\textgreaterb\textlessi/\textgreater\textlesssub\textgreater0\textlesssub/\textgreater and \textlessi\textgreaterb\textlessi/\textgreater\textlesssub\textgreater1\textlesssub/\textgreater is approximately between 3\textlessi\textgreaterσ\textlessi/\textgreater and 4\textlessi\textgreaterσ\textlessi/\textgreater at scales of 3–7°. There are reports of mildly unusual behaviour of the Euler characteristic at 3.66° in the literature, computed from independent measurements of the CMB temperature fluctuations by \textlessi\textgreaterPlanck\textlessi/\textgreater’s predecessor, the \textlessi\textgreaterWilkinson\textlessi/\textgreater Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite. The mildly anomalous behaviour of the Euler characteristic is phenomenologically related to the strongly anomalous behaviour of components and holes, or the zeroth and first Betti numbers, respectively. Further, since these topological descriptors show consistent anomalous behaviour over independent measurements of \textlessi\textgreaterPlanck\textlessi/\textgreater and WMAP, instrumental and systematic errors may be an unlikely source. These are also the scales at which the observed maps exhibit low variance compared to the simulations, and approximately the range of scales at which the power spectrum exhibits a dip with respect to the theoretical model. Non-parametric tests show even stronger differences at almost all scales. Crucially, Gaussian simulations based on power-spectrum matching the characteristics of the observed dipped power spectrum are not able to resolve the anomaly. Understanding the origin of the anomalies in the CMB, whether cosmological in nature or arising due to late-time effects, is an extremely challenging task. Regardless, beyond the trivial possibility that this may still be a manifestation of an extreme Gaussian case, these observations, along with the super-horizon scales involved, may motivate the study of primordial non-Gaussianity. Alternative scenarios worth exploring may be models with non-trivial topology, including topological defect models.