University of Mons

About: University of Mons is a education organization based out in Mons, Belgium. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Large Hadron Collider & Standard Model. The organization has 3073 authors who have published 9465 publications receiving 294776 citations.

Detection of Glottal Closure Instants From Speech Signals: A Quantitative Review

Abstract: The pseudo-periodicity of voiced speech can be exploited in several speech processing applications. This requires however that the precise locations of the glottal closure instants (GCIs) are available. The focus of this paper is the evaluation of automatic methods for the detection of GCIs directly from the speech waveform. Five state-of-the-art GCI detection algorithms are compared using six different databases with contemporaneous electroglottographic recordings as ground truth, and containing many hours of speech by multiple speakers. The five techniques compared are the Hilbert Envelope-based detection (HE), the Zero Frequency Resonator-based method (ZFR), the Dynamic Programming Phase Slope Algorithm (DYPSA), the Speech Event Detection using the Residual Excitation And a Mean-based Signal (SEDREAMS) and the Yet Another GCI Algorithm (YAGA). The efficacy of these methods is first evaluated on clean speech, both in terms of reliabililty and accuracy. Their robustness to additive noise and to reverberation is also assessed. A further contribution of the paper is the evaluation of their performance on a concrete application of speech processing: the causal-anticausal decomposition of speech. It is shown that for clean speech, SEDREAMS and YAGA are the best performing techniques, both in terms of identification rate and accuracy. ZFR and SEDREAMS also show a superior robustness to additive noise and reverberation.

Evidence for Collective Multiparticle Correlations in p-Pb Collisions

Abstract: The second-order azimuthal anisotropy Fourier harmonics, v2, are obtained in pPb and PbPb collisions over a wide pseudorapidity (eta) range based on correlations among six or more charged particles. The pPb data, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35 inverse nanobarns, were collected during the 2013 LHC pPb run at a nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV by the CMS experiment. A sample of semi-peripheral PbPb collision data at sqrt(s[NN])= 2.76 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 2.5 inverse microbarns and covering a similar range of particle multiplicities as the pPb data, is also analyzed for comparison. The six- and eight-particle cumulant and the Lee-Yang zeros methods are used to extract the v2 coefficients, extending previous studies of two- and four-particle correlations. For both the pPb and PbPb systems, the v2 values obtained with correlations among more than four particles are consistent with previously published four-particle results. These data support the interpretation of a collective origin for the previously observed long-range (large Delta[eta]) correlations in both systems. The ratios of v2 values corresponding to correlations including different numbers of particles are compared to theoretical predictions that assume a hydrodynamic behavior of a pPb system dominated by fluctuations in the positions of participant nucleons. These results provide new insights into the multi-particle dynamics of collision systems with a very small overlapping region.

Search for a Higgs boson in the mass range from 145 to 1000 GeV decaying to a pair of W or Z bosons

Abstract: A search for a heavy Higgs boson in the H to WW and H to ZZ decay channels is reported. The search is based upon proton-proton collision data samples corresponding to an integrated luminosity of up to 5.1 inverse femtobarns at sqrt(s)=7 TeV and up to 19.7 inverse femtobarns at sqrt(s)=8 TeV, recorded by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC. Several final states of the H to WW and H to ZZ decays are analyzed. The combined upper limit at the 95% confidence level on the product of the cross section and branching fraction exclude a Higgs boson with standard model-like couplings and decays in the range 145 < m[H] < 1000 GeV. We also interpret the results in the context of an electroweak singlet extension of the standard model.