On the representation of unity by binary cubic forms

If is a binary cubic form with integer coefficients such that has at least two distinct complex roots, then the equation possesses at most ten solutions in integers and , nine if has a nontrivial automorphism group. If, further, is reducible over , then this equation has at most solutions, unless is equivalent under -action to either or . The proofs of these results rely upon the method of Thue-Siegel as refined by Evertse, together with lower bounds for linear forms in logarithms of algebraic numbers and techniques from computational Diophantine approximation. Along the way, we completely solve all Thue equations for cubic and irreducible of positive discriminant . As corollaries, we obtain bounds for the number of solutions to more general cubic Thue equations of the form and to Mordell's equation , where and are nonzero integers.

     

Bloch constants in several variables

We give lower estimates for Bloch's constant for quasiregular holomorphic mappings. A holomorphic mapping of the unit ball into is -quasiregular if it maps infinitesimal spheres to infinitesimal ellipsoids whose major axes are less than or equal to times their minor axes. We show that if is a -quasiregular holomorphic mapping with the normalization then the image contains a schlicht ball of radius at least This result is best possible in terms of powers of Also, we extend to several variables an analogous result of Landau for bounded holomorphic functions in the unit disk.

     

The Lipschitz continuity of the distance function to the cut locus

Let be a closed submanifold of a complete smooth Riemannian manifold and the total space of the unit normal bundle of . For each , let denote the distance from to the cut point of on the geodesic with the velocity vector The continuity of the function on is well known. In this paper we prove that is locally Lipschitz on which is bounded; in particular, if and are compact, then is globally Lipschitz on . Therefore, the canonical interior metric may be introduced on each connected component of the cut locus of and this metric space becomes a locally compact and complete length space.

     

Metrics and embeddings of generalizations of Thompson's group

The distance from the origin in the word metric for generalizations of Thompson's group is quasi-isometric to the number of carets in the reduced rooted tree diagrams representing the elements of . This interpretation of the metric is used to prove that every admits a quasi-isometric embedding into every , and also to study the behavior of the shift maps under these embeddings.

     

Essential cohomology and extraspecial -groups

Let be an odd prime number and let be an extraspecial -group. The purpose of the paper is to show that has no non-zero essential mod- cohomology (and in fact that is Cohen-Macaulay) if and only if and .

     

On the telescopic homotopy theory of spaces

In telescopic homotopy theory, a space or spectrum is approximated by a tower of localizations , , taking account of -periodic homotopy groups for progressively higher . For each , we construct a telescopic Kuhn functor carrying a space to a spectrum with the same -periodic homotopy groups, and we construct a new functor left adjoint to . Using these functors, we show that the th stable monocular homotopy category (comprising the th fibers of stable telescopic towers) embeds as a retract of the th unstable monocular homotopy category in two ways: one giving infinite loop spaces and the other giving ``infinite -suspension spaces.' We deduce that Ravenel's stable telescope conjectures are equivalent to unstable telescope conjectures. In particular, we show that the failure of Ravenel's th stable telescope conjecture implies the existence of highly connected infinite loop spaces with trivial Johnson-Wilson -homology but nontrivial -periodic homotopy groups, showing a fundamental difference between the unstable chromatic and telescopic theories. As a stable chromatic application, we show that each spectrum is -equivalent to a suspension spectrum. As an unstable chromatic application, we determine the -localizations and -localizations of infinite loop spaces in terms of -localizations of spectra under suitable conditions. We also determine the -localizations and -localizations of arbitrary Postnikov -spaces.

     

Extension theory of separable metrizable spaces with applications to dimension theory

The paper deals with generalizing several theorems of the covering dimension theory to the extension theory of separable metrizable spaces. Here are some of the main results:

Generalized Eilenberg-Borsuk Theorem. Let be a countable CW complex. If is a separable metrizable space and is an absolute extensor of for some CW complex , then for any map , closed in , there is an extension of over an open set such that .

Theorem. Let be countable CW complexes. If is a separable metrizable space and is an absolute extensor of , then there is a subset of such that and .

Theorem. Suppose are countable, non-trivial, abelian groups and 0$">. For any separable metrizable space of finite dimension 0$">, there is a closed subset of with for .

Theorem. Suppose is a separable metrizable space of finite dimension and is a compactum of finite dimension. Then, for any , , there is a closed subset of such that and .

Theorem. Suppose is a metrizable space of finite dimension and is a compactum of finite dimension. If and are connected CW complexes, then

     

Good ideals in Gorenstein local rings

Let be an -primary ideal in a Gorenstein local ring (, ) with , and assume that contains a parameter ideal in as a reduction. We say that is a good ideal in if is a Gorenstein ring with . The associated graded ring of is a Gorenstein ring with if and only if . Hence good ideals in our sense are good ones next to the parameter ideals in . A basic theory of good ideals is developed in this paper. We have that is a good ideal in if and only if and . First a criterion for finite-dimensional Gorenstein graded algebras over fields to have nonempty sets of good ideals will be given. Second in the case where we will give a correspondence theorem between the set and the set of certain overrings of . A characterization of good ideals in the case where will be given in terms of the goodness in their powers. Thanks to Kato's Riemann-Roch theorem, we are able to classify the good ideals in two-dimensional Gorenstein rational local rings. As a conclusion we will show that the structure of the set of good ideals in heavily depends on . The set may be empty if , while is necessarily infinite if and contains a field. To analyze this phenomenon we shall explore monomial good ideals in the polynomial ring in three variables over a field . Examples are given to illustrate the theorems.

     

A universal continuum of weight

We prove that every continuum of weight  is a continuous image of the Cech-Stone-remainder  of the real line. It follows that under  the remainder of the half line is universal among the continua of weight  -- universal in the `mapping onto' sense.

We complement this result by showing that 1) under  every continuum of weight less than  is a continuous image of , 2) in the Cohen model the long segment of length  is not a continuous image of , and 3)  implies that is not a continuous image of , whenever  is a -saturated ultrafilter.

We also show that a universal continuum can be gotten from a -saturated ultrafilter on , and that it is consistent that there is no universal continuum of weight  .

     

Serre's generalization of Nagao's theorem: An elementary approach

Let be a smooth projective curve over a field . For each closed point of let be the coordinate ring of the affine curve obtained by removing from . Serre has proved that is isomorphic to the fundamental group, , of a graph of groups , where is a tree with at most one non-terminal vertex. Moreover the subgroups of attached to the terminal vertices of are in one-one correspondence with the elements of , the ideal class group of . This extends an earlier result of Nagao for the simplest case .

Serre's proof is based on applying the theory of groups acting on trees to the quotient graph , where is the associated Bruhat-Tits building. To determine he makes extensive use of the theory of vector bundles (of rank 2) over . In this paper we determine using a more elementary approach which involves substantially less algebraic geometry.

The subgroups attached to the edges of are determined (in part) by a set of positive integers , say. In this paper we prove that is bounded, even when Cl is infinite. This leads, for example, to new free product decomposition results for certain principal congruence subgroups of , involving unipotent and elementary matrices.

     

A product formula for spherical representations of a group of automorphisms of a homogeneous tree, I

Let be the group of automorphisms of a homogeneous tree , and let be a lattice subgroup of . Let be the tensor product of two spherical irreducible unitary representations of . We give an explicit decomposition of the restriction of to . We also describe the spherical component of  explicitly, and this decomposition is interpreted as a multiplication formula for associated orthogonal polynomials.

     

Linear maps determining the norm topology

Let be a Banach function algebra on a compact space , and let be such that for any scalar the element is not a divisor of zero. We show that any complete norm topology on that makes the multiplication by continuous is automatically equivalent to the original norm topology of . Related results for general Banach spaces are also discussed.

     

On the number of -equivalent non-isomorphic models

We prove that if is consistent then is consistent with the following statement: There is for every a model of cardinality which is -equivalent to exactly non-isomorphic models of cardinality . In order to get this result we introduce ladder systems and colourings different from the ``standard' counterparts, and prove the following purely combinatorial result: For each prime number and positive integer it is consistent with that there is a ``good' ladder system having exactly pairwise nonequivalent colourings.

     

A sharp bound for the ratio of the first two Dirichlet eigenvalues of a domain in a hemisphere of

For a domain contained in a hemisphere of the -dimensional sphere we prove the optimal result for the ratio of its first two Dirichlet eigenvalues where , the symmetric rearrangement of in , is a geodesic ball in having the same -volume as . We also show that for geodesic balls of geodesic radius less than or equal to is an increasing function of which runs between the value for (this is the Euclidean value) and for . Here denotes the th positive zero of the Bessel function . This result generalizes the Payne-Pólya-Weinberger conjecture, which applies to bounded domains in Euclidean space and which we had proved earlier. Our method makes use of symmetric rearrangement of functions and various technical properties of special functions. We also prove that among all domains contained in a hemisphere of and having a fixed value of the one with the maximal value of is the geodesic ball of the appropriate radius. This is a stronger, but slightly less accessible, isoperimetric result than that for . Various other results for and of geodesic balls in are proved in the course of our work.

     

On the invariant faces associated with a cone-preserving map

For an nonnegative matrix , an isomorphism is obtained between the lattice of initial subsets (of ) for and the lattice of -invariant faces of the nonnegative orthant . Motivated by this isomorphism, we generalize some of the known combinatorial spectral results on a nonnegative matrix that are given in terms of its classes to results for a cone-preserving map on a polyhedral cone, formulated in terms of its invariant faces. In particular, we obtain the following extension of the famous Rothblum index theorem for a nonnegative matrix: If leaves invariant a polyhedral cone , then for each distinguished eigenvalue of for , there is a chain of distinct -invariant join-irreducible faces of , each containing in its relative interior a generalized eigenvector of corresponding to (referred to as semi-distinguished -invariant faces associated with ), where is the maximal order of distinguished generalized eigenvectors of corresponding to , but there is no such chain with more than members. We introduce the important new concepts of semi-distinguished -invariant faces, and of spectral pairs of faces associated with a cone-preserving map, and obtain several properties of a cone-preserving map that mostly involve these two concepts, when the underlying cone is polyhedral, perfect, or strictly convex and/or smooth, or is the cone of all real polynomials of degree not exceeding that are nonnegative on a closed interval. Plentiful illustrative examples are provided. Some open problems are posed at the end.

     

A product formula for spherical representations of a group of automorphisms of a homogeneous tree, II

Let be the group of automorphisms of a homogeneous tree and let be the tensor product of two spherical irreducible unitary representations of . We complete the explicit decomposition of commenced in part I of this paper, by describing the discrete series representations of which appear as subrepresentations of .

     

Representability is not decidable for finite relation algebras

We prove that there is no algorithm that decides whether a finite relation algebra is representable.

Representability of a finite relation algebra is determined by playing a certain two player game over `atomic -networks'. It can be shown that the second player in this game has a winning strategy if and only if is representable.

Let be a finite set of square tiles, where each edge of each tile has a colour. Suppose includes a special tile whose four edges are all the same colour, a colour not used by any other tile. The tiling problem we use is this: is it the case that for each tile there is a tiling of the plane using only tiles from in which edge colours of adjacent tiles match and with placed at ? It is not hard to show that this problem is undecidable.

From an instance of this tiling problem , we construct a finite relation algebra and show that the second player has a winning strategy in if and only if is a yes-instance. This reduces the tiling problem to the representation problem and proves the latter's undecidability.

     

On modules of finite upper rank

For a group and a prime , the upper -rank of is the supremum of the sectional -ranks of all finite quotients of . It is unknown whether, for a finitely generated group , these numbers can be finite but unbounded as ranges over all primes. The conjecture that this cannot happen if is soluble is reduced to an analogous `relative' conjecture about the upper -ranks of a `quasi-finitely-generated' module for a soluble minimax group . The main result establishes a special case of this relative conjecture, namely when the module is finitely generated and the minimax group is abelian-by-polycyclic. The proof depends on generalising results of Roseblade on group rings of polycyclic groups to group rings of soluble minimax groups. (If true in general, the above-stated conjecture would imply the truth of Lubotzky's `Gap Conjecture' for subgroup growth, in the case of soluble groups; the Gap Conjecture is known to be false for non-soluble groups.)     

Tracially AF -algebras

Inspired by a paper of S. Popa and the classification theory of nuclear -algebras, we introduce a class of -algebras which we call tracially approximately finite dimensional (TAF). A TAF -algebra is not an AF-algebra in general, but a ``large' part of it can be approximated by finite dimensional subalgebras. We show that if a unital simple -algebra is TAF then it is quasidiagonal, and has real rank zero, stable rank one and weakly unperforated -group. All nuclear simple -algebras of real rank zero, stable rank one, with weakly unperforated -group classified so far by their -theoretical data are TAF. We provide examples of nonnuclear simple TAF -algebras. A sufficient condition for unital nuclear separable quasidiagonal -algebras to be TAF is also given. The main results include a characterization of simple rational AF-algebras. We show that a separable nuclear simple TAF -algebra satisfying the Universal Coefficient Theorem and having and is isomorphic to a simple AF-algebra with the same -theory.

     

Anick's spaces and the double loops of odd primary Moore spaces

Several properties of Anick's spaces are established which give a retraction of Anick's off if and . The proof is alternate to and more immediate than the two proofs of Neisendorfer's.