Topology of symplectomorphism groups of rational ruled surfaces

Let be either or the one point blow-up of . In both cases carries a family of symplectic forms , where -1$"> determines the cohomology class . This paper calculates the rational (co)homology of the group of symplectomorphisms of as well as the rational homotopy type of its classifying space . It turns out that each group contains a finite collection , of finite dimensional Lie subgroups that generate its homotopy. We show that these subgroups ``asymptotically commute", i.e. all the higher Whitehead products that they generate vanish as . However, for each fixed there is essentially one nonvanishing product that gives rise to a ``jumping generator" in and to a single relation in the rational cohomology ring . An analog of this generator was also seen by Kronheimer in his study of families of symplectic forms on -manifolds using Seiberg-Witten theory. Our methods involve a close study of the space of -compatible almost complex structures on .

     

Entire solutions of semilinear elliptic equations in and a conjecture of De Giorgi

In 1978 De Giorgi formulated the following conjecture. Let be a solution of in all of such that and 0$"> in . Is it true that all level sets of are hyperplanes, at least if ? Equivalently, does depend only on one variable? When , this conjecture was proved in 1997 by N. Ghoussoub and C. Gui. In the present paper we prove it for . The question, however, remains open for . The results for and 3 apply also to the equation for a large class of nonlinearities .

     

The essentially tame local Langlands correspondence, I

Let be a non-Archimedean local field (of characteristic or ) with finite residue field of characteristic . An irreducible smooth representation of the Weil group of is called essentially tame if its restriction to wild inertia is a sum of characters. The set of isomorphism classes of irreducible, essentially tame representations of dimension is denoted . The Langlands correspondence induces a bijection of with a certain set of irreducible supercuspidal representations of . We consider the set of isomorphism classes of certain pairs , called ``admissible', consisting of a tamely ramified field extension of degree and a quasicharacter of . There is an obvious bijection of with . Using the classification of supercuspidal representations and tame lifting, we construct directly a canonical bijection of with , generalizing and simplifying a construction of Howe (1977). Together, these maps give a canonical bijection of with . We show that one obtains the Langlands correspondence by composing the map with a permutation of of the form , where is a tamely ramified character of depending on . This answers a question of Moy (1986). We calculate the character in the case where is totally ramified of odd degree.

     

Vaught's conjecture on analytic sets

Let be a Polish group. We characterize when there is a Polish space with a continuous -action and an analytic set (that is, the Borel image of some Borel set in some Polish space) having uncountably many orbits but no perfect set of orbit inequivalent points.

Such a Polish -space and analytic exist exactly when there is a continuous, surjective homomorphism from a closed subgroup of onto the infinite symmetric group, , consisting of all permutations of equipped with the topology of pointwise convergence.

     

Homoclinic points of algebraic -actions

Let be an action of by continuous automorphisms of a compact abelian group . A point in is called homoclinic for if as . We study the set of homoclinic points for , which is a subgroup of . If is expansive, then is at most countable. Our main results are that if is expansive, then (1) is nontrivial if and only if has positive entropy and (2) is nontrivial and dense in if and only if has completely positive entropy. In many important cases is generated by a fundamental homoclinic point which can be computed explicitly using Fourier analysis. Homoclinic points for expansive actions must decay to zero exponentially fast, and we use this to establish strong specification properties for such actions. This provides an extensive class of examples of -actions to which Ruelle's thermodynamic formalism applies. The paper concludes with a series of examples which highlight the crucial role of expansiveness in our main results.

     

The threshold for random -SAT is

Let be a random -CNF formula formed by selecting uniformly and independently out of all possible -clauses on variables. It is well known that if , then is unsatisfiable with probability that tends to 1 as . We prove that if , where , then is satisfiable with probability that tends to 1 as .

Our technique, in fact, yields an explicit lower bound for the random -SAT threshold for every . For our bounds improve all previously known such bounds.

     

The enumerative geometry of surfaces and modular forms

Let be a surface, and let be a holomorphic curve in representing a primitive homology class. We count the number of curves of geometric genus with nodes passing through generic points in in the linear system for any and satisfying .

When , this coincides with the enumerative problem studied by Yau and Zaslow who obtained a conjectural generating function for the numbers. Recently, Göttsche has generalized their conjecture to arbitrary in terms of quasi-modular forms. We prove these formulas using Gromov-Witten invariants for families, a degeneration argument, and an obstruction bundle computation. Our methods also apply to blown up at 9 points where we show that the ordinary Gromov-Witten invariants of genus constrained to points are also given in terms of quasi-modular forms.     

Independence of of monodromy groups

Let be a smooth curve over a finite field of characteristic , let be a number field, and let be an -compatible system of lisse sheaves on the curve . For each place of not lying over , the -component of the system is a lisse -sheaf on , whose associated arithmetic monodromy group is an algebraic group over the local field . We use Serre's theory of Frobenius tori and Lafforgue's proof of Deligne's conjecture to show that when the -compatible system is semisimple and pure of some integer weight, the isomorphism type of the identity component of these monodromy groups is ``independent of '. More precisely, after replacing by a finite extension, there exists a connected split reductive algebraic group over the number field such that for every place of not lying over , the identity component of the arithmetic monodromy group of is isomorphic to the group with coefficients extended to the local field .

     

Regularity of the free boundary for the porous medium equation

We study the regularity of the free boundary for solutions of the porous medium equation , , on , with initial data nonnegative and compactly supported. We show that, under certain assumptions on the initial data , the pressure will be smooth up to the interface , when , for some . As a consequence, the free-boundary is smooth.

     

Generalized group characters and complex oriented cohomology theories

Let be the classifying space of a finite group . Given a multiplicative cohomology theory , the assignment

is a functor from groups to rings, endowed with induction (transfer) maps. In this paper we investigate these functors for complex oriented cohomology theories , using the theory of complex representations of finite groups as a model for what one would like to know.

An analogue of Artin's Theorem is proved for all complex oriented : the abelian subgroups of serve as a detecting family for , modulo torsion dividing the order of .

When is a complete local ring, with residue field of characteristic and associated formal group of height , we construct a character ring of class functions that computes . The domain of the characters is , the set of -tuples of elements in each of which has order a power of . A formula for induction is also found. The ideas we use are related to the Lubin-Tate theory of formal groups. The construction applies to many cohomology theories of current interest: completed versions of elliptic cohomology, -theory, etc.

The th Morava K-theory Euler characteristic for is computed to be the number of -orbits in . For various groups , including all symmetric groups, we prove that is concentrated in even degrees.

Our results about extend to theorems about , where is a finite -CW complex.

     

Mating Siegel quadratic polynomials

Let be a quadratic rational map of the sphere which has two fixed Siegel disks with bounded type rotation numbers and . Using a new degree Blaschke product model for the dynamics of and an adaptation of complex a priori bounds for renormalization of critical circle maps, we prove that can be realized as the mating of two Siegel quadratic polynomials with the corresponding rotation numbers and .

     

Conformal restriction: The chordal case

We characterize and describe all random subsets of a given simply connected planar domain (the upper half-plane , say) which satisfy the ``conformal restriction' property, i.e., connects two fixed boundary points ( and , say) and the law of conditioned to remain in a simply connected open subset of is identical to that of , where is a conformal map from onto with and . The construction of this family relies on the stochastic Loewner evolution processes with parameter and on their distortion under conformal maps. We show in particular that SLE is the only random simple curve satisfying conformal restriction and we relate it to the outer boundaries of planar Brownian motion and SLE.     

The classification problem for torsion-free abelian groups of finite rank

We prove that for each , the classification problem for torsion-free abelian groups of rank is not Borel reducible to that for torsion-free abelian groups of rank .

     

Représentations -adiques et normes universelles I. Le cas cristallin

Let be a crystalline -adic representation of the absolute Galois group of an finite unramified extension of , and let be a lattice of stable by . We prove the following result: Let be the maximal sub-representation of with Hodge-Tate weights strictly positive and . Then, the projective limit of is equal up to torsion to the projective limit of . So its rank over the Iwasawa algebra is .

     

Duality of Hardy and BMO spaces associated with operators with heat kernel bounds

Let be the infinitesimal generator of an analytic semigroup on with suitable upper bounds on its heat kernels. Auscher, Duong, and McIntosh defined a Hardy space by means of an area integral function associated with the operator . By using a variant of the maximal function associated with the semigroup , a space of functions of BMO type was defined by Duong and Yan and it generalizes the classical BMO space. In this paper, we show that if has a bounded holomorphic functional calculus on , then the dual space of is where is the adjoint operator of . We then obtain a characterization of the space in terms of the Carleson measure. We also discuss the dimensions of the kernel spaces of BMO when is a second-order elliptic operator of divergence form and when is a Schrödinger operator, and study the inclusion between the classical BMO space and spaces associated with operators.

     

Hilbert schemes, polygraphs and the Macdonald positivity conjecture

We study the isospectral Hilbert scheme , defined as the reduced fiber product of with the Hilbert scheme of points in the plane , over the symmetric power . By a theorem of Fogarty, is smooth. We prove that is normal, Cohen-Macaulay and Gorenstein, and hence flat over . We derive two important consequences.

(1) We prove the strong form of the conjecture of Garsia and the author, giving a representation-theoretic interpretation of the Kostka-Macdonald coefficients . This establishes the Macdonald positivity conjecture, namely that .

(2) We show that the Hilbert scheme is isomorphic to the -Hilbert scheme of Nakamura, in such a way that is identified with the universal family over . From this point of view, describes the fiber of a character sheaf at a torus-fixed point of corresponding to .

The proofs rely on a study of certain subspace arrangements , called polygraphs, whose coordinate rings carry geometric information about . The key result is that is a free module over the polynomial ring in one set of coordinates on . This is proven by an intricate inductive argument based on elementary commutative algebra.

     

On the Brylinski-Kostant filtration

Let be a semisimple Lie algebra and a finite dimensional simple module. The Brylinski-Kostant (simply, BK) filtration on weight spaces of is defined by applying powers of a principle nilpotent element. It leads to a -character of . Through a result of B. Kostant the BK filtration of the zero weight space is determined by the so-called generalized exponents of . Later R. K. Brylinski calculated the BK filtration on dominant weights of assuming a vanishing result for cohomology later established by B. Broer. The result could be expressed in terms of polynomials introduced by G. Lusztig.

In the present work, Verma module maps are used to determine the BK filtration for all weights. To do this several filtrations are introduced and compared, a key point being the graded injectivity of the ring of differential operators on the open Bruhat cell viewed as a module under diagonal action. This replaces cohomological vanishing and thereby Brylinski's result is given a new proof. The calculation for non-dominant weights uses the fact that the corresponding graded ring is a domain as well as a positivity result of G. Lusztig which ensures that there are no accidental cancellations. This method allows one to compare the BK filtrations in adjacent chambers.

     

Random polynomials having few or no real zeros

Consider a polynomial of large degree whose coefficients are independent, identically distributed, nondegenerate random variables having zero mean and finite moments of all orders. We show that such a polynomial has exactly real zeros with probability as through integers of the same parity as the fixed integer . In particular, the probability that a random polynomial of large even degree has no real zeros is . The finite, positive constant is characterized via the centered, stationary Gaussian process of correlation function . The value of depends neither on nor upon the specific law of the coefficients. Under an extra smoothness assumption about the law of the coefficients, with probability one may specify also the approximate locations of the zeros on the real line. The constant is replaced by in case the i.i.d. coefficients have a nonzero mean.

     

Criteria for -ampleness

In the noncommutative geometry of Artin, Van den Bergh, and others, the twisted homogeneous coordinate ring is one of the basic constructions. Such a ring is defined by a -ample divisor, where is an automorphism of a projective scheme . Many open questions regarding -ample divisors have remained.

We derive a relatively simple necessary and sufficient condition for a divisor on to be -ample. As a consequence, we show right and left -ampleness are equivalent and any associated noncommutative homogeneous coordinate ring must be noetherian and have finite, integral GK-dimension. We also characterize which automorphisms yield a -ample divisor.

     

Double affine Hecke algebras and 2-dimensional local fields

We give an interpretation of the double affine Hecke algebra of Cherednik as a (suitably regularized) algebra of double cosets of a group by a subgroup , extending the well-known interpretations of the finite and affine Hecke algebras. In this interpretation, consists of -points of a simple algebraic group, where is a 2-dimensional local field such as or , and is a certain analog of the Iwahori subgroup.