The Quest for the Ideal Scintillator for Hybrid Phototubes

In this paper we present the results of extensive studies of scintillators for hybrid phototubes with luminescent screens. The results of the developments of such phototubes with a variety of scintillators are presented. New scintillator materials for such kind of application are discussed. The requirements for scintillators to use in such hybrid phototubes are formulated. It is shown that very fast and highly efficient inorganic scintillators like ZnO:Ga will be ideal scintillators for such kind of application.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures and 1 table. Submitted to the proceedings of SCINT2007 Conference, Winston-Salem, NC USA, June 4-8, 200

Stochastic Quasi-Fej\'er Block-Coordinate Fixed Point Iterations with Random Sweeping

This work proposes block-coordinate fixed point algorithms with applications to nonlinear analysis and optimization in Hilbert spaces. The asymptotic analysis relies on a notion of stochastic quasi-Fej\'er monotonicity, which is thoroughly investigated. The iterative methods under consideration feature random sweeping rules to select arbitrarily the blocks of variables that are activated over the course of the iterations and they allow for stochastic errors in the evaluation of the operators. Algorithms using quasinonexpansive operators or compositions of averaged nonexpansive operators are constructed, and weak and strong convergence results are established for the sequences they generate. As a by-product, novel block-coordinate operator splitting methods are obtained for solving structured monotone inclusion and convex minimization problems. In particular, the proposed framework leads to random block-coordinate versions of the Douglas-Rachford and forward-backward algorithms and of some of their variants. In the standard case of $m=1$ block, our results remain new as they incorporate stochastic perturbations

Stochastic Approximations and Perturbations in Forward-Backward Splitting for Monotone Operators

We investigate the asymptotic behavior of a stochastic version of the forward-backward splitting algorithm for finding a zero of the sum of a maximally monotone set-valued operator and a cocoercive operator in Hilbert spaces. Our general setting features stochastic approximations of the cocoercive operator and stochastic perturbations in the evaluation of the resolvents of the set-valued operator. In addition, relaxations and not necessarily vanishing proximal parameters are allowed. Weak and strong almost sure convergence properties of the iterates is established under mild conditions on the underlying stochastic processes. Leveraging these results, we also establish the almost sure convergence of the iterates of a stochastic variant of a primal-dual proximal splitting method for composite minimization problems

Quasinonexpansive Iterations on the Affine Hull of Orbits: From Mann's Mean Value Algorithm to Inertial Methods

Fixed point iterations play a central role in the design and the analysis of a large number of optimization algorithms. We study a new iterative scheme in which the update is obtained by applying a composition of quasinonexpansive operators to a point in the affine hull of the orbit generated up to the current iterate. This investigation unifies several algorithmic constructs, including Mann's mean value method, inertial methods, and multi-layer memoryless methods. It also provides a framework for the development of new algorithms, such as those we propose for solving monotone inclusion and minimization problems

Variable Metric Forward-Backward Splitting with Applications to Monotone Inclusions in Duality

We propose a variable metric forward-backward splitting algorithm and prove its convergence in real Hilbert spaces. We then use this framework to derive primal-dual splitting algorithms for solving various classes of monotone inclusions in duality. Some of these algorithms are new even when specialized to the fixed metric case. Various applications are discussed