Scanning Kelvin Microscope: a new method for surface investigations

Based on the well known Kelvin probe for work function measurements a new microstructure analysis system - the Scanning Kelvin Microscope - has been developed. It allows to measure simultaneously with high lateral resolution the distribution of the contact potential difference (CPD) between a conductive sample and a reference probe together with the topographical structure of the sample surface. The measurement is contact free and non-destructive and can be carried out in natural environments. At present the lateral resolution of the measurement approaches 5 microm. The results can be displayed on a computer in three dimensional colour pictures.     

Triangulations and moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces with group actions

Summary We study that subset of the moduli space of stable genusg,g>1, Riemann surfaces which consists of such stable Riemann surfaces on which a given finite groupF acts. We show first that this subset is compact. It turns out that, for general finite groupsF, the above subset is not connected. We show, however, that for ℤ₂ actions this subsetis connected. Finally, we show that even in the moduli space ofsmooth genusg Riemann surfaces, the subset of those Riemann surfaces on which ℤ₂ actsis connected. In view of deliberations of Klein ([8]), this was somewhat surprising. These results are based on new coordinates for moduli spaces. These coordinates are obtained by certainregular triangulations of Riemann surfaces. These triangulations play an important role also elsewhere, for instance in approximating eigenfunctions of the Laplace operator numerically. This work has been supported by the European Communities Science Plan Project No SCI^*-CT91 (TSTS) “Computational Methods in the Theory of Riemann Surfaces and Algebraic Curves,” by Academy of Finland and by the Swiss National Science Foundation Grant 20-34099.92. We thank M. C. Petrus for providing excellent motivation for this work. This article was processed by the author using the LATEX style filecljourl from Springer-Verlag.     

A Heuristic Decomposition Algorithm for Scheduling Problems on Mixed Graphs

We consider a scheduling problem where a set of n jobs has to be processed on a set of m machines and arbitrary precedence constraints between operations are given. Moreover, for any two operations i and j values a _ij >0 and a _ji >0 may be given where a _ij is the minimal difference between the starting times of operations i and j when operation i is processed first. Often, the objective is to minimize the makespan but we consider also arbitrary regular criteria. Even the special cases of the classical job shop problem J//C_max belong to the set of NP-hard problems. Therefore, approximation or heuristic algorithms are necessary to handle large-dimension problems. Based on the mixed graph model we give a heuristic decomposition algorithm for such a problem, i.e. the initial problem is partitioned into subproblems that can be solved exactly or approximately with a small error bound. These subproblems are obtained by a relaxation of a subset of the set of undirected edges of the mixed graph. The subproblems are successively solved and a proportion of the results obtained for one subproblem is kept for further subproblem definitions. Numerical results of the algorithm presented here are given.     

On isotone functions with the Substitution Property in distributive lattices

A universal algebra isaffine complete if all functions satisfying the Substitution Property are polynomials (composed of the basic operations and the elements of the algebra). In 1962, the first author proved that a bounded distributive lattice is affine complete if and only if it does not contain a proper Boolean interval. Recently, M. Ploica generalized this result to arbitrary distributive lattices.In this paper, we introduce a class of functions on a latticeL, we call themID-polynomials, that derive from polynomials on the ideal lattice (resp., dual ideal lattice) ofL; they are isotone functions and satisfy the Substitution Property. We prove that for a distributive latticeL, all unary functions with the Substitution Property are ID-polynomials if and only ifL contains no proper Boolean interval.The research of the first author was supported by the NSERC of Canada. The research of the second author was supported by the Hungarian National Foundation for Scientific Research, under Grant No. 1903.     

On a topological characterization of the real line

M.C. Zdun [17] asked whether a subset S of R² such that R × S is homeomorphic to R² must be homeomorphic to R, all these sets being endowed with the usual topologies. We show that the answer is affirmative.     

Computing global minima to polynomial optimization problems using Gröbner bases

The local optimality conditions to polynomial optimization problems are a set of polynomial equations (plus some inequality conditions). With the recent techniques of Gröbner bases one can find all solutions to such systems, and hence also find global optima. We give a short survey of these methods. We also apply them to a set of problems termed with exact solutions unknown in the problem sets of Hock and Schittkowski. To these problems we give exact solutions.