Publications

2026

• Towards Reliable LLM-Based Model Driven Engineering: when Full Syntax Checking and Formal Verification Join the Loop
  
  • Sultan Bastien
  • Apvrille Ludovic
  , 2026. Model-Driven Engineering facilitates the design of embedded systems by promoting abstraction and enabling early verification of design correctness. Recent approaches have integrated Large Language Models into MDE workflows to automatically generate models from textual specifications. However, these models often require extensive prompt refinement and lack formal guarantees of correctness. This paper introduces an enhanced LLM-based generation process in TTool-AI, incorporating a novel dual feedback loop that combines automated syntactic checking with formal verification of safety properties. The loop iteratively refines LLM-generated SysML block and state-machine diagrams to ensure syntactic validity and verify safety properties. First experimental evaluation on both academic and industrial-grade specifications demonstrates that the proposed mechanism reliably produces syntactically correct models, enabling direct model checking of LLM-produced models and reducing the effort required by engineers to obtain correct-by-construction designs. (10.82331/ERTS.2026.52)
  DOI : 10.82331/ERTS.2026.52
• Collaborative Action on Timing InterferenCes: Summary and Perspectives at Mid-term
  
  • Maiza Claire
  • Rieg Lionel
  • Béchennec Jean-Luc
  • Asavoae Mihail
  • Blouin Dominique
  • Brandner Florian
  • Carle Thomas
  • Cassé Hugues
  • Faucou Sébastien
  • Hladik Pierre-Emmanuel
  • Erwan Jahier
  • Jan Mathieu
  • Jenn Éric
  • Jezequel Loïg
  • Potop Butucaru Dumitru
  • Puaut Isabelle
  • Raymond Pascal
  • Rochange Christine
  • Sotin Pascal
  • Parent-Vigouroux Catherine
  • Zahaf Houssam
  • Chabot Hector
  • Jeanmougin Louison
  • Rebhi Hichem
  • Ferres Bruno
  • Essabyr Maha
  , 2026. CAOTIC is an ambitious initiative aimed at pooling and coordinating the efforts of major French research teams working on timing analysis of multicore real-time systems, with a focus on interference due to shared resources. The objective is to enable the efficient use of multicores in critical systems. Based on a better understanding of timing anomalies and interference, considering the specificities of applications (structural properties and execution model), and revisiting the links between timing analysis and synthesis processes (code generation, mapping, scheduling), we target significant progresses in timing analysis models and techniques for critical systems, as well as in methodologies for their application in industry. In this paper, at project mid-term, we show the progress of the project. We also present some original work, about the use of a Tricore plaform and its timing model, and discuss open questions and future work. (10.82331/ERTS.2026.27)
  DOI : 10.82331/ERTS.2026.27
• Characterization of EMF exposure induced by French cellular networks
  
  • Liu Jiang
  • Wang Shanshan
  • Haider Zain
  • Sun Qunfei
  • Zhang Yarui
  • Bories Serge
  • Ourak Lamine
  • Wiart Joe
  Annals of Telecommunications - annales des télécommunications, Springer, 2026. Abstract This study presents a comprehensive evaluation of electromagnetic exposure in operational French fourth generation (4 G)/long term evolution (LTE) networks, combining field measurements with computational modeling to assess both uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) contributions. We introduce the novel Radiated Energy per Bit Transmitted (REBT) metric to quantify network radiated energy efficiency, while characterizing TX power patterns across different services, revealing higher mean-to-maximum power ratios for data services compared to voice calls. Through analysis of a representative 2600 MHz user, we demonstrate field-strength-dependent exposure dynamics: with DL field strength of 1 V/m, UL contributes 30% (head) and 12.8% (whole body) of total exposure, while at 0.38 V/m, UL becomes predominant (75% head, 50.4% whole body). Notably, the relative contribution of UL exposure to the total head exposure is consistently higher than that of DL exposure across all scenarios. All measured exposure levels remain well below ICNIRP safety limits, validating safety compliance of LTE. The study establishes an important methodological framework, combining the global exposure index with detailed transfer function analysis, providing critical insights for both current 4 G and emerging fifth generation (5 G) exposure assessments. (10.1007/s12243-026-01156-x)
  DOI : 10.1007/s12243-026-01156-x
• Residual Tokens Enhance Masked Autoencoders For Speech Modeling
  
  • Samir Sadok
  • Lathuilière Stéphane
  • Alameda-Pineda Xavier
  , 2026. Recent speech modeling relies on explicit attributes such as pitch, content, and speaker identity, but these alone cannot capture the full richness of natural speech. We introduce RT-MAE, a novel masked autoencoder framework that augments the supervised attributes-based modeling with unsupervised residual trainable tokens, designed to encode the information not explained by explicit labeled factors (e.g., timbre variations, noise, emotion etc). Experiments show that RT-MAE improves reconstruction quality, preserving content and speaker similarity while enhancing expressivity. We further demonstrate its applicability to speech enhancement, removing noise at inference while maintaining controllability and naturalness.
• Random Stinespring superchannel: converting channel queries into dilation isometry queries
  
  • Girardi Filippo
  • Mele Francesco Anna
  • Zhao Haimeng
  • Fanizza Marco
  • Lami Ludovico
  , 2025. The recently introduced random purification channel, which converts $n$ copies of an arbitrary mixed quantum state into $n$ copies of the same uniformly random purification, has emerged as a powerful tool in quantum information theory. Motivated by this development, we introduce a channel-level analogue, which we call the random Stinespring superchannel. This consists in a procedure to transform $n$ parallel queries of an arbitrary quantum channel into $n$ parallel queries of the same uniformly random Stinespring isometry, via universal encoding and decoding operations that are efficiently implementable. When the channel is promised to have Choi rank at most $r$, the procedure can be tailored to yield a Stinespring environment of dimension $r$. As a consequence, quantum channel learning reduces to isometry learning, yielding a simple channel learning algorithm, based on existing isometry learning protocols, that matches the performance of the two recently proposed channel tomography algorithms. Complementarily, whereas the optimality of these algorithms had previously been established only up to a logarithmic factor in the dimension, we close this gap by removing this logarithmic factor from the lower bound. Taken together, our results fully establish the optimality of these recently introduced channel learning algorithms, showing that the optimal query complexity of learning a quantum channel with input dimension $d_A$, output dimension $d_B$, and Choi rank $r$ is $Θ(d_A d_B r)$.
• Non-iid hypothesis testing: from classical to quantum
  
  • de Palma Giacomo
  • Fanizza Marco
  • Mowry Connor
  • O'Donnell Ryan
  , 2025. We study hypothesis testing (aka state certification) in the non-identically distributed setting. A recent work (Garg et al. 2023) considered the classical case, in which one is given (independent) samples from $T$ unknown probability distributions $p_1, \dots, p_T$ on $[d] = \{1, 2, \dots, d\}$, and one wishes to accept/reject the hypothesis that their average $p_{\mathrm{avg}}$ equals a known hypothesis distribution $q$. Garg et al. showed that if one has just $c = 2$ samples from each $p_i$, and provided $T \gg \frac{\sqrt{d}}{ε^2} + \frac{1}{ε^4}$, one can (whp) distinguish $p_{\mathrm{avg}} = q$ from $d_{\mathrm{TV}}(p_{\mathrm{avg}},q) > ε$. This nearly matches the optimal result for the classical iid setting (namely, $T \gg \frac{\sqrt{d}}{ε^2}$). Besides optimally improving this result (and generalizing to tolerant testing with more stringent distance measures), we study the analogous problem of hypothesis testing for non-identical quantum states. Here we uncover an unexpected phenomenon: for any $d$-dimensional hypothesis state $σ$, and given just a single copy ($c = 1$) of each state $ρ_1, \dots, ρ_T$, one can distinguish $ρ_{\mathrm{avg}} = σ$ from $D_{\mathrm{tr}}(ρ_{\mathrm{avg}},σ) > ε$ provided $T \gg d/ε^2$. (Again, we generalize to tolerant testing with more stringent distance measures.) This matches the optimal result for the iid case, which is surprising because doing this with $c = 1$ is provably impossible in the classical case. We also show that the analogous phenomenon happens for the non-iid extension of identity testing between unknown states. A technical tool we introduce may be of independent interest: an Efron-Stein inequality, and more generally an Efron-Stein decomposition, in the quantum setting. (10.48550/arXiv.2510.06147)
  DOI : 10.48550/arXiv.2510.06147
• Efficient learning of bosonic Gaussian unitaries
  
  • Fanizza Marco
  • Iyer Vishnu
  • Lee Junseo
  • Mele Antonio A.
  • Mele Francesco A.
  , 2025. Bosonic Gaussian unitaries are fundamental building blocks of central continuous-variable quantum technologies such as quantum-optic interferometry and bosonic error-correction schemes. In this work, we present the first time-efficient algorithm for learning bosonic Gaussian unitaries with a rigorous analysis. Our algorithm produces an estimate of the unknown unitary that is accurate to small worst-case error, measured by the physically motivated energy-constrained diamond distance. Its runtime and query complexity scale polynomially with the number of modes, the inverse target accuracy, and natural energy parameters quantifying the allowed input energy and the unitary's output-energy growth.<p>The protocol uses only experimentally friendly photonic resources-coherent and squeezed probes, passive linear optics, and heterodyne/homodyne detection. We then employ an efficient classical post-processing routine that leverages a symplectic regularization step to project matrix estimates onto the symplectic group. In the limit of unbounded input energy, our procedure attains arbitrarily high precision using only 2m + 2 queries, where m is the number of modes. To our knowledge, this is the first provably efficient learning algorithm for a multiparameter family of continuous-variable unitaries.</p> (10.48550/arXiv.2510.05531)
  DOI : 10.48550/arXiv.2510.05531
• Random purification channel for passive Gaussian bosons
  
  • Mele Francesco Anna
  • Girardi Filippo
  • Chen Senrui
  • Fanizza Marco
  • Lami Ludovico
  , 2025. (10.48550/arXiv.2512.16878)
  DOI : 10.48550/arXiv.2512.16878
• Unrolled Multiplicative Updates for Nonnegative Matrix Factorization applied to Hyperspectral Unmixing
  
  • Kervazo Christophe
  • Cohen Jérémy E.
  , 2026. HyperSpectral Unmixing (HSU), the problem of separating mixed spectra of overlapping materials in a hyperspectral image, has motivated dedicated algorithmic developments in the last two decades. On the one hand, traditional model-based algorithms frequently guarantee interpretable results. On the other hand, deep-learning-based approaches are often faster at inference time and may obtain better empirical results. This work utilizes the strengths of both approaches by building on the deep unrolling paradigm. Our contribution is twofold. First, we propose two new algorithms based on deep unrolling of the well-known Multiplicative Updates. The first, coined Non-Adaptive Learned Multiplicative Updates (NALMU), adopts a simple element-wise multiplicative scheme. The second, called Recursive Adaptive Learned Multiplicative Updates (RALMU), has more flexible updates and better take into account the spatial correlations in the abundances. Second, we relate NALMU to the minimization of an explicit cost function under some assumptions. Such guarantees are unique in the HSU field. NALMU and RALMU are tested on astrophysics and remote sensing datasets. They outperform the other deep learning-based HSU algorithms and classical iterative schemes for the endmember estimates and obtain competitive results for the abundance estimates, even when trained in a self-supervised way. The code used in this paper will be made available upon publication.
• The NPA hierarchy does not always attain the commuting operator value
  
  • Fanizza Marco
  • Kroell Larissa
  • Mehta Arthur
  • Paddock Connor
  • Rochette Denis
  • Slofstra William
  • Zhao Yuming
  , 2025. We show that it is undecidable to determine whether the commuting operator value of a nonlocal game is strictly greater than 1/2. Specifically, there is a computable mapping from Turing machines to /boolean constraint system (BCS) nonlocal games in which the halting property of the machine is encoded as a decision problem for the commuting operator value of the game. As a corollary, there is a BCS game for which the value of the Navascués-Pironio-Acín (NPA) hierarchy does not attain the commuting operator value at any finite level. (10.48550/arXiv.2510.04943)
  DOI : 10.48550/arXiv.2510.04943
• Receiver Noise Calibration in CV-QKD accounting for Noise Dynamics
  
  • Ricard Guillaume
  • Jaouën Yves
  • Alléaume Romain
  , 2025, pp.043287. Continuous-Variable Quantum Key Distribution (CV-QKD) relies on accurate noise calibration at the receiver to ensure the security of quantum communication. Traditional calibration methods often oversimplify noise characteristics, neglecting the impact of local oscillator (LO) noise and the critical role of noise spectral properties, which can lead to imprecise Shot Noise Calibration (SNC). Our contributions are threefold: 1) we propose an operational framework for calibration, relying on the notion of stationarity 2) in this framework, we give a method allowing us to derive the optimal calibration duration for a given experiment 3) leveraging our knowledge of noise spectral properties, we introduce a novel SNC method. This work also formalizes the calibration procedures, addressing implicit assumptions and providing a better foundation for the certification of CV-QKD protocols, of which calibration is a fundamental part. We demonstrate that our improved calibration technique offers higher performance and higher tolerance to receiver imperfections, which can enhance the performance and cost-effectiveness of CV-QKD systems. (10.48550/arXiv.2509.07549)
  DOI : 10.48550/arXiv.2509.07549
• What can we do in a symmetry-constrained perspective? The importance of the total charge's status in quantum reference frame frameworks
  
  • Doat Guilhem
  • Vanrietvelde Augustin
  , 2025. The study of quantum reference frames has received renewed interest over the last years, leading to the parallel development of non-equivalent frameworks by different com- munities. We clarify the differences between these frameworks. At the mathematical level, they mainly differ in the kind of symmetry (either weak or strong) employed to constrain the system. We show that this mathematical difference corresponds to a fundamental physical question: whether the global charge associated to the symmetry group is acces- sible to symmetry-constrained observers. In this context, we formulate a definition of a perspective in terms of operational capacities, or lack thereof. Turning to consequences of adopting either approach, we discuss how adopting the weak approach induces an ambi- guity in the momenta included in each perspective and bars from defining reversible QRF transformations. We then review and analyze the existing arguments motivating each approach, and show how they bear upon the problem of charge accessibility. Finally, we introduce a simple operational scenario in which upholding two reasonable physical pos- tulates leads to the conclusion that internal observers could measure the global charge by 1/ performing a relativized interference measurement and 2/ classically communicating.
• Convergence of the Cumulant Expansion and Polynomial-Time Algorithm for Weakly Interacting Fermions
  
  • Chen Hongrui
  • Rouzé Cambyse
  • Chen Jielun
  • Jiang Jiaqing
  • Scalet Samuel
  • Zhan Yongtao
  • Chan Garnet Kin-Lic
  • Ying Lexing
  • Tong Yu
  , 2025. We propose a randomized algorithm to compute the log-partition function of weakly interacting fermions with polynomial runtime in both the system size and precision. Although weakly interacting fermionic systems are considered tractable for many computational methods such as the diagrammatic quantum Monte Carlo, a mathematically rigorous proof of polynomial runtime has been lacking. In this work we first extend the proof techniques developed in previous works for proving the convergence of the cumulant expansion in periodic systems to the non-periodic case. A key equation used to analyze the sum of connected Feynman diagrams, which we call the tree-determinant expansion, reveals an underlying tree structure in the summation. This enables us to design a new randomized algorithm to compute the log-partition function through importance sampling augmented by belief propagation. This approach differs from the traditional method based on Markov chain Monte Carlo, whose efficiency is hard to guarantee, and enables us to obtain a algorithm with provable polynomial runtime. (10.48550/arXiv.2512.12010)
  DOI : 10.48550/arXiv.2512.12010
• Docker does not Guarantee Reproducibility
  
  • Malka Julien
  • Zacchiroli Stefano
  • Zimmermann Théo
  , 2026. <div><p>The reproducibility of software environments is a critical concern in modern software engineering, with ramifications ranging from the effectiveness of collaboration workflows to software supply chain security and scientific reproducibility. Containerization technologies like Docker address this problem by encapsulating software environments into shareable filesystem snapshots known as images. While Docker is frequently cited in the literature as a tool that enables reproducibility in theory, the extent of its guarantees and limitations in practice remains under-explored.</p><p>In this work, we address this gap through two complementary approaches. First, we conduct a systematic literature review to examine how Docker is framed in scientific discourse on reproducibility and to identify documented best practices for writing Dockerfiles enabling reproducible image building. Then, we perform a large-scale empirical study of 5298 Docker builds collected from GitHub workflows. By rebuilding these images and comparing the results with their historical counterparts, we assess the real reproducibility of Docker images and evaluate the effectiveness of the best practices identified in the literature.</p></div>
• A Survey on Verifying Reasoning Chains Generated by Large Language Models
  
  • Jaulmes Bérénice
  • Arouete Jean-Christophe
  • Barry Mariam
  • Alam Mehwish
  , 2026. Large Languages Models (LLMs) are currently being extensively employed for many Natural Language Processing tasks such as question answering, natural language inference, document summarization etc. Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting guides LLMs with the reasoning steps, compelling them to generate reasoning chains. While some of the reasoning chains may follow a correct thought process, they can also suffer from hallucinations, leading to errors in answer generation. Recently, many articles have targeted the problem of verifying these reasoning chains from various aspects. Despite this recent attention, to the best of our knowledge, no comprehensive survey currently summarizes these studies on CoT verification. This work addresses that gap by presenting a detailed overview of the methods for verifying reasoning chains and categorizing them according to their methodology. This paper introduces a novel taxonomy of classification of the methods introduced so far and mainly divides them into approaches that assess entire chains versus those that examine individual steps. This paper also reviews benchmarks for evaluating CoT reasoning and verification methods and further discusses the challenges and future directions associated with these methods. By compiling and analyzing these approaches, our survey aims to advance the understanding and development of robust reasoning techniques in LLMs.
• LELA: an LLM-based Entity Linking Approach with Zero-Shot Domain Adaptation
  
  • Haffoudhi Samy
  • Suchanek Fabian M
  • Holzenberger Nils
  , 2026. Entity linking (mapping ambiguous mentions in text to entities in a knowledge base) is a foundational step in tasks such as knowledge graph construction, question-answering, and information extraction. Our method, LELA, is a modular coarse-to-fine approach that leverages the capabilities of large language models (LLMs), and works with different target domains, knowledge bases and LLMs, without any fine-tuning phase. Our experiments across various entity linking settings show that LELA is highly competitive with fine-tuned approaches, and substantially outperforms the non-fine-tuned ones.
• The Inverse Drum Machine: Source Separation Through Joint Transcription and Analysis-by-Synthesis
  
  • Torres Bernardo
  • Peeters Geoffroy
  • Richard Gaël
  IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2026, 34, pp.84-95. We present the Inverse Drum Machine, a novel approach to Drum Source Separation that leverages an analysis-by-synthesis framework combined with deep learning. Unlike recent supervised methods that require isolated stem recordings for training, our approach is trained on drum mixtures with only transcription annotations. IDM integrates Automatic Drum Transcription and One-shot Drum Sample Synthesis, jointly optimizing these tasks in an end-to-end manner. By convolving synthesized one-shot samples with estimated onsets, akin to a drum machine, we reconstruct the individual drum stems and train a Deep Neural Network on the reconstruction of the mixture. Experiments on the StemGMD dataset demonstrate that IDM achieves separation quality comparable to state-of-the-art supervised methods that require isolated stems data. (10.1109/TASLPRO.2025.3629286)
  DOI : 10.1109/TASLPRO.2025.3629286
• Rate of convergence of the conditioned random walk towards the Brownian bridge
  
  • Decreusefond Laurent
  • Jacquet Antonin
  , 2026. <div><p>We study the rate of convergence of two discrete processes towards the Brownian bridge: the random walk conditioned to be zero at time 2n and the empirical process which appears in the Glivencko-Cantelli theorem. Combining a functional Stein method with a Radon-Nikodym representation of the bridge, we bound the Fortet-Mourier distance between these conditioned processes and the Brownian bridge.</p></div>
• Scalable Information Theoretic Evaluation of the Rank Statistics in Side-Channel Attacks
  
  • Béguinot Julien
  • Rioul Olivier
  • Masure Loïc
  • Standaert François-Xavier
  • Cheng Wei
  • Guilley Sylvain
  IACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems, IACR, 2026, 2026 (1), pp.53-81. Evaluating the security of a device against side-channel attacks is a difficult task. One prominent strategy for this purpose is to characterize the distribution of the rank of the correct key among the different key hypotheses produced by a maximum likelihood attack, depending on the number of measured traces. In practice, evaluators can estimate some statistics of the rank that are used as security indicators—e.g., the arithmetic and geometric mean rank, the median rank, the α-marginal guesswork, or the success rate of level L. Yet, a direct estimation becomes time-consuming as security levels increase.In this work, we provide new bounds on these figures of merit in terms of the mutual information between the secret and its side-channel leakages. These bounds provide theoretical insights on the evolution of the figures of merit in terms of noise level, computational complexity (how many keys are evaluated) and data complexity (how many side-channel traces are used for the attack). To the best of our knowledge, these bounds are the first to formally characterize security guarantees that depend on the computational power of the adversary, based on a measure of their informational leakages. It follows that our results enable fast shortcut formulas for the certification laboratories, potentially enabling them to speed up the security evaluation process. We demonstrate the tightness of our bounds on both synthetic traces (in a controlled environment) and real-world traces from two popular datasets (Aisylab/AES_HD and SMAesH). (10.46586/tches.v2026.i1.53-81)
  DOI : 10.46586/tches.v2026.i1.53-81
• UNSUPERVISED DOMAIN ADAPTATION WITH TARGET-ONLY MARGIN DISPARITY DISCREPANCY
  
  • Miralles Gauthier
  • Le Folgoc Loic
  • Jugnon Vincent
  • Gori Pietro
  , 2026. <div><p>In interventional radiology, Cone-Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT) is a helpful imaging modality that provides guidance to practicians during minimally invasive procedures. CBCT differs from traditional Computed Tomography (CT) due to its limited reconstructed field of view, specific artefacts, and the intra-arterial administration of contrast medium. While CT benefits from abundant publicly available annotated datasets, interventional CBCT data remain scarce and largely unannotated, with existing datasets focused primarily on radiotherapy applications. To address this limitation, we leverage a proprietary collection of unannotated interventional CBCT scans in conjunction with annotated CT data, employing domain adaptation techniques to bridge the modality gap and enhance liver segmentation performance on CBCT. We propose a novel unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA) framework based on the formalism of Margin Disparity Discrepancy (MDD), which improves target domain performance through a reformulation of the original MDD optimization framework. Experimental results on CT and CBCT datasets for liver segmentation demonstrate that our method achieves state-of-the-art performance in UDA, as well as in the few-shot setting.</p></div>
• Convergence rate for the coupon collector's problem with Stein's method
  
  • Costacèque Bruno
  • Decreusefond Laurent
  Stochastic Processes and their Applications, Elsevier, 2026. The functional characterization of a measure, an essential but delicate aspect of Stein's method, is shown to be accessible for stable probability distributions on convex cones. This notion encompasses the usual stable distributions \textit{e.g.} Gaussian, Pareto, \textit{etc.} but also the max-stable distributions: Weibull, Gumbel and Fréchet. We use the definition of max-stability to define a Markov process whose invariant measure is the stable measure of interest. In this paper, we focus on the Gumbel distribution and show how this construction can be applied to estimate the rate of convergence in the classical coupon collector's problem. (10.48550/arXiv.2501.06535)
  DOI : 10.48550/arXiv.2501.06535