Geometry of families of nodal curves on the blown-up projective plane

Let be the projective plane blown up at generic points. Denote by the strict transform of a generic straight line on and the exceptional divisors of the blown-up points on respectively. We consider the variety of all irreducible curves in with nodes as the only singularities and give asymptotically nearly optimal sufficient conditions for its smoothness, irreducibility and non-emptiness. Moreover, we extend our conditions for the smoothness and the irreducibility to families of reducible curves. For we give the complete answer concerning the existence of nodal curves in .

     

Local Asymmetry and the Inner Radius of Nodal Domains

Let M be a closed Riemannian manifold of dimension n. Let ?_λ be an eigenfunction of the Laplace–Beltrami operator corresponding to an eigenvalue λ. We show that the volume of {?_λ > 0} ∩ B is ≥C|B|/λ ⁿ , where B is any ball centered at a point of the nodal set. We apply this result to prove that each nodal domain contains a ball of radius ≥C/λ ⁿ . The results in this paper extend previous results of Nazarov, Polterovich, Sodin and of the author.     

On the nodal sets of toral eigenfunctions

We study the nodal sets of eigenfunctions of the Laplacian on the standard d-dimensional flat torus. The question we address is: Can a fixed hypersurface lie on the nodal sets of eigenfunctions with arbitrarily large eigenvalue? In dimension two, we show that this happens only for segments of closed geodesics. In higher dimensions, certain cylindrical sets do lie on nodal sets corresponding to arbitrarily large eigenvalues. Our main result is that this cannot happen for hypersurfaces with nonzero Gauss-Kronecker curvature. In dimension two, the result follows from a uniform lower bound for the L ²-norm of the restriction of eigenfunctions to the curve, proved in an earlier paper (Bourgain and Rudnick in C. R. Math. 347(21?C22):1249?C1253, 2009). In high dimensions we currently do not have this bound. Instead, we make use of the real-analytic nature of the flat torus to study variations on this bound for restrictions of eigenfunctions to suitable submanifolds in the complex domain. In all of our results, we need an arithmetic ingredient concerning the cluster structure of lattice points on the sphere. We also present an independent proof for the two-dimensional case relying on the ??abc-theorem?? in function fields.     

Symmetry in the geometry of metric contact pairs

We prove that the universal covering of a complete locally symmetric normal metric contact pair manifold with decomposable ? is a Calabi‐Eckmann manifold or the Riemannian product of a sphere and . We show that a complete, simply connected, normal metric contact pair manifold with decomposable ?, such that the foliation induced by the vertical subbundle is regular and reflections in the integral submanifolds of the vertical subbundle are isometries, is the product of globally ?‐symmetric spaces or the product of a globally ?‐symmetric space and . Moreover in the first case the manifold fibers over a locally symmetric space endowed with a symplectic pair.     

Surgery diagrams and open book decompositions of contact 3-manifolds

Summary We show an algorithmic way for finding a compatible open book decomposition on a contact 3-manifold given by contact (±1)-surgery.     

On the geometry of Kawaguchi spaces

In the paper, with the use of the E. Cartan exterior forms method, the theory of linear and affine connections of the generalized Kawaguchi space of order two is constructed. It is proved that the linear connection of this space incorporates intrinsic antiquaternional structures, the conditions of their complete integrability are found, and the affine connections associated with the above-mentioned structures are constructed. Translated from Lietuvos Matematikos Rinkinys, Vol. 40, No. 3, pp. 321–334, July–September, 2000. Translated by R. Lapinskas     

Apporoximation of contact geometry in the dynamical simulation of wheel-rail

Models for the geometrical contact of wheel and rail are a basic component of multibody system (MBS) models for wheel-rail systems. Approximations are used to get sufficiently differentiable contact conditions that can be evaluated efficiently. We discuss an approximation that is essentially based on polynomial 2D-tensorproduct splines and minimizes a functional that combines a weighted least squares approximation of a rigid contact model with a smoothing term. An efficient algorithm to compute the tensorproduct spline is developed, the parallelization on a cluster of workstations is discussed. We report on results of both the sequential and the parallel algorithm and give simulation results for a rigid wheelset on a straight track.     

On the location and profile of spike-layer nodal solutions to nonlinear Schrödinger equations

The existence and concentration behavior of a nodal solution are established for the equation

     

On the geometry of random Cantor sets and fractal percolation

Random Cantor sets are constructions which generalize the classical Cantor set, middle third deletion being replaced by a random substitution in an arbitrary number of dimensions. Two results are presented here. (a) We establish a necessary and sufficient condition for the projection of ad-dimensional random Cantor set in [0,1]^d onto ane-dimensional coordinate subspace to contain ane-dimensional ball with positive probability. The same condition applies to the event that the projection is the entiree-dimensional unit cube [0,1] ^e . This answers a question of Dekking and Meester,⁽⁹⁾ (b) The special case of fractal percolation arises when the substitution is as follows: The cube [0,1] ^d is divided intoM ^d subcubes of side-lengthM ^–, and each such cube is retained with probabilityp independently of all other subcubes. We show that the critical valuep _c(M, d) ofp, marking the existence of crossings of [0,1] ^d contained in the limit set, satisfiesp _c(M, d)p _c(d) asM, wherep _c(d) is the critical probability of site percolation on a latticeL ^d obtained by adding certain edges to the hypercubic lattice ^d . This result generalizes in an unexpected way a finding of Chayes and Chayes,⁽⁴⁾ who studied the special case whend=2.     

Poisson brackets associated to the conformal geometry of curves

In this paper we present an invariant moving frame, in the group theoretical sense, along curves in the Möbius sphere. This moving frame will describe the relationship between all conformal differential invariants for curves that appear in the literature. Using this frame we first show that the Kac-Moody Poisson bracket on can be Poisson reduced to the space of conformal differential invariants of curves. The resulting bracket will be the conformal analogue of the Adler-Gel'fand-Dikii bracket. Secondly, a conformally invariant flow of curves induces naturally an evolution on the differential invariants of the flow. We give the conditions on the invariant flow ensuring that the induced evolution is Hamiltonian with respect to the reduced Poisson bracket. Because of a certain parallelism with the Euclidean case we study what we call Frenet and natural cases. We comment on the implications for completely integrable systems, and describe conformal analogues of the Hasimoto transformation.

     

On the geometry ofP-convex sets for operators of real principal type

A geometric criterion ofP-convexity for supports is provided for sets whose boundary does not contain intervals of straight lines. Research partially done at the Weizmann Institute of Science.     

On the existence of solutions to quasistatic frictional rational contact problems with limited interpenetration

The existence of solutions to quasistatic frictional contact problems with limited interpenetration with an ahead prescribed bound is proved here. If the depth of the interpenetration tends to zero, then there are some sequence of solutions of such problems and a solution of the corresponding Signorini contact problem such that it is the limit of the sequence.     

Scaling coupling of reflecting Brownian motions and the hot spots problem

We introduce a new type of coupling of reflecting Brownian motions in smooth planar domains, called scaling coupling. We apply this to obtain monotonicity properties of antisymmetric second Neumann eigenfunctions of convex planar domains with one line of symmetry. In particular, this gives the proof of the hot spots conjecture for some known types of domains and some new ones.

     

The geometry of contact Lee forms and a contact analog of Ikuta’s theorem

Questions of the conformal geometry of quasi-Sasakian manifolds are studied. A contact analog of Ikuta’s theorem is obtained. It is proved that a regular locally conformally quasi-Sasakian structure is normal if and only if it is locally conformally cosymplectic and has closed contact form. It is shown that the Kenmotsu structures have these properties and that a structure with the above properties is a Kenmotsu structure if and only if its contact Lee form coincides with the contact form.     

On the distribution of Laplacian eigenvalues of trees

For a tree T$T$ with n$n$ vertices, we apply an algorithm due to Jacobs and Trevisan (2011) to study how the number of small Laplacian eigenvalues behaves when the tree is transformed by a transformation defined by Mohar (2007). This allows us to obtain a new bound for the number of eigenvalues that are smaller than 2. We also report our progress towards a conjecture on the number of eigenvalues that are smaller than the average degree.     

The effect of domain shape on the number of positive and nodal solutions for semilinear elliptic equations

In this paper, we study the effect of domain shape on the number of positive and nodal (sign-changing) solutions for a class of semilinear elliptic equations. We prove a semilinear elliptic equation in a domain Ω$\Omega$ that contains m$m$ disjoint large enough balls has m²$m^2$ 2-nodal solutions and m$m$ positive solutions.