Connections with prescribed first Pontrjagin form

Let be a principal bundle over a manifold of dimension . If , then we prove that every differential 4-form representing the first Pontrjagin class of is the Pontrjagin form of some connection on .     

The periodic Euler-Bernoulli equation

We continue the study of the Floquet (spectral) theory of the beam equation, namely the fourth-order eigenvalue problem

where the functions and are periodic and strictly positive. This equation models the transverse vibrations of a thin straight (periodic) beam whose physical characteristics are described by and . Here we develop a theory analogous to the theory of the Hill operator .

We first review some facts and notions from our previous works, including the concept of the pseudospectrum, or -spectrum.

Our new analysis begins with a detailed study of the zeros of the function , for any given ``quasimomentum' , where is the Floquet-Bloch variety of the beam equation (the Hill quantity corresponding to is , where is the discriminant and the period of ). We show that the multiplicity of any zero of can be one or two and (for some ) if and only if is also a zero of another entire function , independent of . Furthermore, we show that has exactly one zero in each gap of the spectrum and two zeros (counting multiplicities) in each -gap. If is a double zero of , it may happen that there is only one Floquet solution with quasimomentum ; thus, there are exceptional cases where the algebraic and geometric multiplicities do not agree.

Next we show that if is an open -gap of the pseudospectrum (i.e., ), then the Floquet matrix has a specific Jordan anomaly at and .

We then introduce a multipoint (Dirichlet-type) eigenvalue problem which is the analogue of the Dirichlet problem for the Hill equation. We denote by the eigenvalues of this multipoint problem and show that is also characterized as the set of values of for which there is a proper Floquet solution such that .

We also show (Theorem 7) that each gap of the -spectrum contains exactly one and each -gap of the pseudospectrum contains exactly two 's, counting multiplicities. Here when we say ``gap' or ``-gap' we also include the endpoints (so that when two consecutive bands or -bands touch, the in-between collapsed gap, or -gap, is a point). We believe that can be used to formulate the associated inverse spectral problem.

As an application of Theorem 7, we show that if is a collapsed (``closed') -gap, then the Floquet matrix is diagonalizable.

Some of the above results were conjectured in our previous works. However, our conjecture that if all the -gaps are closed, then the beam operator is the square of a second-order (Hill-type) operator, is still open.

     

Poset block equivalence of integral matrices

Given square matrices and with a poset-indexed block structure (for which an block is zero unless ), when are there invertible matrices and with this required-zero-block structure such that ? We give complete invariants for the existence of such an equivalence for matrices over a principal ideal domain . As one application, when is a field we classify such matrices up to similarity by matrices respecting the block structure. We also give complete invariants for equivalence under the additional requirement that the diagonal blocks of and have determinant . The invariants involve an associated diagram (the ``-web') of -module homomorphisms. The study is motivated by applications to symbolic dynamics and -algebras.

     

Stationary sets for the wave equation in crystallographic domains

Let be a crystallographic group in generated by reflections and let be the fundamental domain of We characterize stationary sets for the wave equation in when the initial data is supported in the interior of The stationary sets are the sets of time-invariant zeros of nontrivial solutions that are identically zero at .

We show that, for these initial data, the -dimensional part of the stationary sets consists of hyperplanes that are mirrors of a crystallographic group , This part comes from a corresponding odd symmetry of the initial data.

In physical language, the result is that if the initial source is localized strictly inside of the crystalline , then unmovable interference hypersurfaces can only be faces of a crystalline substructure of the original one.

     

Anderson's double complex and gamma monomials for rational function fields

We investigate algebraic -monomials of Thakur's positive characteristic -function, by using Anderson and Das' double complex method of computing the sign cohomology of the universal ordinary distribution. We prove that the -monomial associated to an element of the second sign cohomology of the universal ordinary distribution of generates a Kummer extension of some Carlitz cyclotomic function field, which is also a Galois extension of the base field . These results are characteristic- analogues of those of Deligne on classical -monomials, proofs of which were given by Das using the double complex method. In this paper, we also obtain some results on -monomials of Carlitz's exponential function.

     

On the Clifford algebra of a binary form

The Clifford algebra of a binary form of degree is the -algebra , where is the ideal generated by . has a natural homomorphic image that is a rank Azumaya algebra over its center. We prove that the center is isomorphic to the coordinate ring of the complement of an explicit -divisor in , where is the curve and is the genus of .

     

Finiteness theorems for positive definite -regular quadratic forms

An integral quadratic form of variables is said to be -regular if globally represents all quadratic forms of variables that are represented by the genus of . For any , it is shown that up to equivalence, there are only finitely many primitive positive definite integral quadratic forms of variables that are -regular. We also investigate similar finiteness results for almost -regular and spinor -regular quadratic forms. It is shown that for any , there are only finitely many equivalence classes of primitive positive definite spinor or almost -regular quadratic forms of variables. These generalize the finiteness result for 2-regular quaternary quadratic forms proved by Earnest (1994).

     

A path-transformation for random walks and the Robinson-Schensted correspondence

The author and Marc Yor recently introduced a path-transformation with the property that, for belonging to a certain class of random walks on , the transformed walk has the same law as the original walk conditioned never to exit the Weyl chamber . In this paper, we show that is closely related to the Robinson-Schensted algorithm, and use this connection to give a new proof of the above representation theorem. The new proof is valid for a larger class of random walks and yields additional information about the joint law of and . The corresponding results for the Brownian model are recovered by Donsker's theorem. These are connected with Hermitian Brownian motion and the Gaussian Unitary Ensemble of random matrix theory. The connection we make between the path-transformation and the Robinson-Schensted algorithm also provides a new formula and interpretation for the latter. This can be used to study properties of the Robinson-Schensted algorithm and, moreover, extends easily to a continuous setting.

     

Stability of infinite-dimensional sampled-data systems

Suppose that a static-state feedback stabilizes a continuous-time linear infinite-dimensional control system. We consider the following question: if we construct a sampled-data controller by applying an idealized sample-and-hold process to a continuous-time stabilizing feedback, will this sampled-data controller stabilize the system for all sufficiently small sampling times? Here the state space and the control space are Hilbert spaces, the system is of the form , where is the generator of a strongly continuous semigroup on , and the continuous time feedback is . The answer to the above question is known to be ``yes' if and are finite-dimensional spaces. In the infinite-dimensional case, if is not compact, then it is easy to find counterexamples. Therefore, we restrict attention to compact feedback. We show that the answer to the above question is ``yes', if is a bounded operator from into . Moreover, if is unbounded, we show that the answer ``yes' remains correct, provided that the semigroup generated by is analytic. We use the theory developed for static-state feedback to obtain analogous results for dynamic-output feedback control.

     

Maximal degree subsheaves of torsion free sheaves on singular projective curves

Fix integers with k>0$"> and . Let be an integral projective curve with and a rank torsion free sheaf on which is a flat limit of a family of locally free sheaves on . Here we prove the existence of a rank subsheaf of such that . We show that for every there is an integral projective curve not Gorenstein, and a rank 2 torsion free sheaf on with no rank 1 subsheaf with . We show the existence of torsion free sheaves on non-Gorenstein projective curves with other pathological properties.

     

Spines and topology of thin Riemannian manifolds

Consider Riemannian manifolds for which the sectional curvature of and second fundamental form of the boundary are bounded above by one in absolute value. Previously we proved that if has sufficiently small inradius (i.e. all points are sufficiently close to the boundary), then the cut locus of exhibits canonical branching behavior of arbitrarily low branching number. In particular, if is thin in the sense that its inradius is less than a certain universal constant (known to lie between and ), then collapses to a triply branched simple polyhedral spine.

We use a graphical representation of the stratification structure of such a collapse, and relate numerical invariants of the graph to topological invariants of when is simply connected. In particular, the number of connected strata of the cut locus is a topological invariant. When is -dimensional and compact, has complexity in the sense of Matveev, and is a connected sum of copies of the real projective space , copies chosen from the lens spaces , and handles chosen from or , with 3-balls removed, where . Moreover, we construct a thin metric for every graph, and hence for every homeomorphism type on the list.

     

On the Iwasawa -invariants of real abelian fields

For a prime number and a number field , let denote the projective limit of the -parts of the ideal class groups of the intermediate fields of the cyclotomic -extension over . It is conjectured that is finite if is totally real. When is an odd prime and is a real abelian field, we give a criterion for the conjecture, which is a generalization of results of Ichimura and Sumida. Furthermore, in a special case where divides the degree of , we also obtain a rather simple criterion.

     

A classification and examples of rank one chain domains

A chain order of a skew field is a subring of so that implies Such a ring has rank one if , the Jacobson radical of is its only nonzero completely prime ideal. We show that a rank one chain order of is either invariant, in which case corresponds to a real-valued valuation of or is nearly simple, in which case and are the only ideals of or is exceptional in which case contains a prime ideal that is not completely prime. We use the group of divisorial of with the subgroup of principal to characterize these cases. The exceptional case subdivides further into infinitely many cases depending on the index of in Using the covering group of and the result that the group ring is embeddable into a skew field for a skew field, examples of rank one chain orders are constructed for each possible exceptional case.

     

Nonlinearizable actions of dihedral groups on affine space

Let be a reductive, non-abelian, algebraic group defined over . We investigate algebraic -actions on the total spaces of non-trivial algebraic -vector bundles over -modules with great interest in the case that is a dihedral group. We construct a map classifying such actions of a dihedral group in some cases and describe the spaces of those non-linearizable actions in some examples.

     

Heat kernels on metric measure spaces and an application to semilinear elliptic equations

We consider a metric measure space and a heat kernel on satisfying certain upper and lower estimates, which depend on two parameters and . We show that under additional mild assumptions, these parameters are determined by the intrinsic properties of the space . Namely, is the Hausdorff dimension of this space, whereas , called the walk dimension, is determined via the properties of the family of Besov spaces on . Moreover, the parameters and are related by the inequalities .

We prove also the embedding theorems for the space , and use them to obtain the existence results for weak solutions to semilinear elliptic equations on of the form

where is the generator of the semigroup associated with .

The framework in this paper is applicable for a large class of fractal domains, including the generalized Sierpinski carpet in .

     

The free entropy dimension of hyperfinite von Neumann algebras

Suppose is a hyperfinite von Neumann algebra with a normal, tracial state and is a set of selfadjoint generators for . We calculate , the modified free entropy dimension of . Moreover, we show that depends only on and . Consequently, is independent of the choice of generators for . In the course of the argument we show that if is a set of selfadjoint generators for a von Neumann algebra with a normal, tracial state and has finite-dimensional approximants, then for any hyperfinite von Neumann subalgebra of Combined with a result by Voiculescu, this implies that if has a regular diffuse hyperfinite von Neumann subalgebra, then .

     

Zero entropy, non-integrable geodesic flows and a non-commutative rotation vector

Let be a -step nilpotent Lie algebra; we say is non-integrable if, for a generic pair of points , the isotropy algebras do not commute: . Theorem: If is a simply-connected -step nilpotent Lie group, is non-integrable, is a cocompact subgroup, and is a left-invariant Riemannian metric, then the geodesic flow of on is neither Liouville nor non-commutatively integrable with first integrals. The proof uses a generalization of the rotation vector pioneered by Benardete and Mitchell.