42,534 research outputs found
Solar flare hard X-ray spikes observed by RHESSI: a statistical study
Context. Hard X-ray (HXR) spikes refer to fine time structures on timescales
of seconds to milliseconds in high-energy HXR emission profiles during solar
flare eruptions. Aims. We present a preliminary statistical investigation of
temporal and spectral properties of HXR spikes. Methods. Using a three-sigma
spike selection rule, we detected 184 spikes in 94 out of 322 flares with
significant counts at given photon energies, which were detected from
demodulated HXR light curves obtained by the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar
Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI). About one fifth of these spikes are also
detected at photon energies higher than 100 keV. Results. The statistical
properties of the spikes are as follows. (1) HXR spikes are produced in both
impulsive flares and long-duration flares with nearly the same occurrence
rates. Ninety percent of the spikes occur during the rise phase of the flares,
and about 70% occur around the peak times of the flares. (2) The time durations
of the spikes vary from 0.2 to 2 s, with the mean being 1.0 s, which is not
dependent on photon energies. The spikes exhibit symmetric time profiles with
no significant difference between rise and decay times. (3) Among the most
energetic spikes, nearly all of them have harder count spectra than their
underlying slow-varying components. There is also a weak indication that spikes
exhibiting time lags in high-energy emissions tend to have harder spectra than
spikes with time lags in low-energy emissions.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figure
Finite-horizon H∞ control for discrete time-varying systems with randomly occurring nonlinearities and fading measurements
This technical note deals with the H∞ control problem for a class of discrete time-varying nonlinear systems with both randomly occurring nonlinearities and fading measurements over a finite-horizon. The system measurements are transmitted through fading channels described by a modified stochastic Rice fading model. The purpose of the addressed problem is to design a set of time-varying controllers such that, in the presence of channel fading and randomly occurring nonlinearities, the H∞ performance is guaranteed over a given finite-horizon. The model transformation technique is first employed to simplify the addressed problem, and then the stochastic analysis in combination with the completing squares method are carried out to obtain necessary and sufficient conditions of an auxiliary index which is closely related to the finite-horizon H∞ performance. Moreover, the time-varying controller parameters are characterized via solving coupled backward recursive Riccati difference equations (RDEs). A simulation example is utilized to illustrate the usefulness of the proposed controller design scheme
Chromospheric Evaporation in an X1.0 Flare on 2014 March 29 Observed with IRIS and EIS
Chromospheric evaporation refers to dynamic mass motions in flare loops as a
result of rapid energy deposition in the chromosphere. These have been observed
as blueshifts in X-ray and extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) spectral lines
corresponding to upward motions at a few tens to a few hundreds of km/s. Past
spectroscopic observations have also revealed a dominant stationary component,
in addition to the blueshifted component, in emission lines formed at high
temperatures (~10 MK). This is contradictory to evaporation models predicting
predominant blueshifts in hot lines. The recently launched Interface Region
Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) provides high resolution imaging and spectroscopic
observations that focus on the chromosphere and transition region in the UV
passband. Using the new IRIS observations, combined with coordinated
observations from the EUV Imaging Spectrometer, we study the chromospheric
evaporation process from the upper chromosphere to corona during an X1.0 flare
on 2014 March 29. We find evident evaporation signatures, characterized by
Doppler shifts and line broadening, at two flare ribbons separating from each
other, suggesting that chromospheric evaporation takes place in successively
formed flaring loops throughout the flare. More importantly, we detect dominant
blueshifts in the high temperature Fe XXI line (~10 MK), in agreement with
theoretical predictions. We also find that, in this flare, gentle evaporation
occurs at some locations in the rise phase of the flare, while explosive
evaporation is detected at some other locations near the peak of the flare.
There is a conversion from gentle to explosive evaporation as the flare
evolves.Comment: ApJ in pres
Metastability of Asymptotically Well-Behaved Potential Games
One of the main criticisms to game theory concerns the assumption of full
rationality. Logit dynamics is a decentralized algorithm in which a level of
irrationality (a.k.a. "noise") is introduced in players' behavior. In this
context, the solution concept of interest becomes the logit equilibrium, as
opposed to Nash equilibria. Logit equilibria are distributions over strategy
profiles that possess several nice properties, including existence and
uniqueness. However, there are games in which their computation may take time
exponential in the number of players. We therefore look at an approximate
version of logit equilibria, called metastable distributions, introduced by
Auletta et al. [SODA 2012]. These are distributions that remain stable (i.e.,
players do not go too far from it) for a super-polynomial number of steps
(rather than forever, as for logit equilibria). The hope is that these
distributions exist and can be reached quickly by logit dynamics.
We identify a class of potential games, called asymptotically well-behaved,
for which the behavior of the logit dynamics is not chaotic as the number of
players increases so to guarantee meaningful asymptotic results. We prove that
any such game admits distributions which are metastable no matter the level of
noise present in the system, and the starting profile of the dynamics. These
distributions can be quickly reached if the rationality level is not too big
when compared to the inverse of the maximum difference in potential. Our proofs
build on results which may be of independent interest, including some spectral
characterizations of the transition matrix defined by logit dynamics for
generic games and the relationship of several convergence measures for Markov
chains
Computational structure‐based drug design: Predicting target flexibility
The role of molecular modeling in drug design has experienced a significant revamp in the last decade. The increase in computational resources and molecular models, along with software developments, is finally introducing a competitive advantage in early phases of drug discovery. Medium and small companies with strong focus on computational chemistry are being created, some of them having introduced important leads in drug design pipelines. An important source for this success is the extraordinary development of faster and more efficient techniques for describing flexibility in three‐dimensional structural molecular modeling. At different levels, from docking techniques to atomistic molecular dynamics, conformational sampling between receptor and drug results in improved predictions, such as screening enrichment, discovery of transient cavities, etc. In this review article we perform an extensive analysis of these modeling techniques, dividing them into high and low throughput, and emphasizing in their application to drug design studies. We finalize the review with a section describing our Monte Carlo method, PELE, recently highlighted as an outstanding advance in an international blind competition and industrial benchmarks.We acknowledge the BSC-CRG-IRB Joint Research Program in Computational Biology. This work was supported by a grant
from the Spanish Government CTQ2016-79138-R.J.I. acknowledges support from SVP-2014-068797, awarded by the Spanish Government.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
H-Alpha and Hard X-Ray Observations of a Two-Ribbon Flare Associated with a Filament Eruption
We perform a multi-wavelength study of a two-ribbon flare on 2002 September
29 and its associated filament eruption, observed simultaneously in the H-alpha
line by a ground-based imaging spectrograph and in hard X-rays by RHESSI. The
flare ribbons contain several H-alpha bright kernels that show different
evolutional behaviors. In particular, we find two kernels that may be the
footpoints of a loop. A single hard X-ray source appears to cover these two
kernels and to move across the magnetic neutral line. We explain this as a
result of the merging of two footpoint sources that show gradually asymmetric
emission owing to an asymmetric magnetic topology of the newly reconnected
loops. In one of the H-alpha kernels, we detect a continuum enhancement at the
visible wavelength. By checking its spatial and temporal relationship with the
hard X-ray emission, we ascribe it as being caused by electron beam
precipitation. In addition, we derive the line-of-sight velocity of the
filament plasma based on the Doppler shift of the filament-caused absorption in
the H-alpha blue wing. The filament shows rapid acceleration during the
impulsive phase. These observational features are in principal consistent with
the general scenario of the canonical two-ribbon flare model.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
- …