Modular Equations and Distortion Functions

Modular equations occur in number theory, but it is less known that such equations also occur in the study of deformation properties of quasiconformal mappings. The authors study two important plane quasiconformal distortion functions, obtaining monotonicity and convexity properties, and finding sharp bounds for them. Applications are provided that relate to the quasiconformal Schwarz Lemma and to Schottky's Theorem. These results also yield new bounds for singular values of complete elliptic integrals.Comment: 23 page

Direct observation of high-speed plasma outflows produced by magnetic reconnection in solar impulsive events

Spectroscopic observations of a solar limb flare recorded by SUMER on SOHO reveal, for the first time, hot fast magnetic reconnection outflows in the corona. As the reconnection site rises across the SUMER spectrometer slit, significant blue- and red-shift signatures are observed in sequence in the Fe XIX line, reflecting upflows and downflows of hot plasma jets, respectively. With the projection effect corrected, the measured outflow speed is between 900-3500 km/s, consistent with theoretical predictions of the Alfvenic outflows in magnetic reconnection region in solar impulsive events. Based on theoretic models, the magnetic field strength near the reconnection region is estimated to be 19-37 Gauss.Comment: 5 pages, 6 color figures, 1 animation onlin

A Systematic Study of Power Corrections from World Deep Inelastic Scattering Measurements

By performing an analysis in moment space using high statistics DIS world data, we extract the values of both the QCD parameter $\Lambda^{(4)}_{\bar{MS}}$ up to NLO and of the power corrections to the proton structure function, $F_2$. At variance with previous analyses, the use of moments allows us to extend the kinematical range to larger values of $x$, where we find that power corrections are quantitatively more important. Our results are consistent with the $n$ dependence predicted by IR renormalon calculations. We discuss preliminary results on nuclear targets with the intent of illustrating a possible strategy to disentangle power corrections ascribed to IR renormalons from the ones generated dynamically e.g. from rescattering in the final state. The latter appear to be modified in nuclear targets.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, LateX with espcrc2 and epsfi

An Adaptive Soft Handover Scheme Using Fuzzy Load Balancing for WCDMA Systems

In cellular systems, user distribution variations can cause load imbalance between cells. Embedding a load balancing strategy within the handover scheme means that ensuing traffic congestion can be alleviated by dynamically reallocating load between neighbouring cells. An adaptive soft handover scheme for multimedia cellular communication systems is proposed in this paper, that considers both the cell load factors as well as the pilot channel signal-to-interference-and-noise-ratio (SINR) for soft handovers. By using fuzzy principles, the soft handover thresholds and time hysteresis are adapted dependent upon the loads of the neighbouring cells. Simulation results show that the new algorithm provides improved system performance in terms of a more evenly distributed load, lower blocking probabilities and higher throughput