Calculus I: The first derivative of pseudoisotopy theory

Let P be the (stable, smooth) pseudoisotopy space of the space X. For any map Y: YX of spaces, we identify the homotopy type of the fiber of P(f): P(f) P(f) in a stable range, roughly twice the connectivity of the map YX. We establish some language for discussing and manipulating such stable-range relative calculations for any homotopy functor. The theorem about P has a corollary about Waldhausen's A. Dedicated to Alexander GrothendieckResearch supported in part by NSF grant DMS-8806444 and by a Sloan Fellowship. Research at MSRI supported in part by NSF grant DMS-8505550.     

Rates of growth and sample moduli for weighted empirical processes indexed by sets

Summary Probability inequalities are obtained for the supremum of a weighted empirical process indexed by a Vapnik-ervonenkis class C of sets. These inequalities are particularly useful under the assumption P({CC:P(C)<t})»0 as t»0. They are used to obtain almost sure bounds on the rate of growth of the process as the sample size approaches infinity, to find an asymptotic sample modulus for the unweighted empirical process, and to study the ratio P _n/P of the empirical measure to the actual measure.Research supported under an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship grant No. MCS 83-11686, and in part by NSF grant No. DMS-8301807     

Miura opers and critical points of master functions

Critical points of a master function associated to a simple Lie algebra come in families called the populations [11]. We prove that a population is isomorphic to the flag variety of the Langlands dual Lie algebra . The proof is based on the correspondence between critical points and differential operators called the Miura opers. For a Miura oper D, associated with a critical point of a population, we show that all solutions of the differential equation DY=0 can be written explicitly in terms of critical points composing the population. Supported in part by NSF grant DMS-0140460 Supported in part by NSF grant DMS-0244579     

The coarse Lipschitz geometry of \ell_p\oplus\ell_q

We show that for 1 < p < ∞ with p ≠ 2 the space L _p (0,1) is not uniformly homeomorphic to . We also show that if 1 < p < 2 < q < ∞ the space has unique uniform structure, answering a question of Johnson, Lindenstrauss and Schechtman (Geom. Funct. Anal. 6:430–470, 1996). The first author was supported by NSF grant DMS-0555670 and the second author was supported by NSF grant DMS-0701097.     

Recognizing Berge Graphs

A graph is Berge if no induced subgraph of G is an odd cycle of length at least five or the complement of one. In this paper we give an algorithm to test if a graph G is Berge, with running time O(|V (G)|⁹). This is independent of the recent proof of the strong perfect graph conjecture.* Currently this author is a Clay Mathematics Institute Research Fellow.** Supported by NSF grant DMI-0352885 and ONR grant N00014-97-1-0196. Supported by ONR grant N00014-01-1-0608, and NSF grant DMS-0070912. Supported by EPSRC grant GR/R35629/01.     

On the nondegeneracy of constant mean curvature surfaces

We prove that many complete, noncompact, constant mean curvature (CMC) surfaces are nondegenerate; that is, the Jacobi operator Δ_f + | A_f |² has no L² kernel. In fact, if ∑ has genus zero with k ends, and if f (∑) is embedded (or Alexandrov immersed) in a half-space, then we find an explicit upper bound for the dimension of the L² kernel in terms of the number of non-cylindrical ends. Our main tool is a conjugation operation on Jacobi fields which linearizes the conjugate cousin construction. Consequences include partial regularity for CMC moduli space, a larger class of CMC surfaces to use in gluing constructions, and a surprising characterization of CMC surfaces via spinning spheres. R.K. partially supported by NSF grants DMS-0076085 at GANG/UMass and DMS-9810361 at MSRI, and by a FUNCAP grant in Fortaleza, Brazil. J.R. partially supported by an NSF VIGRE grant at Utah. Received: January 2005; Accepted: June 2005     

Packing directed circuits

We prove a conjecture of Younger, that for every integern0 there exists an integert0 such that for every digraphG, eitherG hasn vertex-disjoint directed circuits, orG can be made acyclic by deleting at mostt vertices.Research partially supported by DONET ECHM contract CHRXCT930090.Research partially supported by DIMACS, by NSF grant DMS-9401981 and by ONR grant N00014-92-J-1965, and partially performed under a consulting agreement with Bellcore.Research partially supported by DIMACS, by Université de Paris VI, by NSF grant DMS-9303761 and by ONR grant N00014-93-1-0325, and partially performed under a consulting agreement with Bellcore.     

On fixed points of permutations

The number of fixed points of a random permutation of {1,2,…,n} has a limiting Poisson distribution. We seek a generalization, looking at other actions of the symmetric group. Restricting attention to primitive actions, a complete classification of the limiting distributions is given. For most examples, they are trivial – almost every permutation has no fixed points. For the usual action of the symmetric group on k-sets of {1,2,…,n}, the limit is a polynomial in independent Poisson variables. This exhausts all cases. We obtain asymptotic estimates in some examples, and give a survey of related results. This paper is dedicated to the life and work of our colleague Manfred Schocker. We thank Peter Cameron for his help. Diaconis was supported by NSF grant DMS-0505673. Fulman received funding from NSA grant H98230-05-1-0031 and NSF grant DMS-0503901. Guralnick was supported by NSF grant DMS-0653873. This research was facilitated by a Chaire d’Excellence grant to the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis.     

On asymptotic cones and quasi-isometry classes of fundamental groups of 3-manifolds

We apply the concept of asymptotic cone to distinguish quasi-isometry classes of fundamental groups of 3-manifolds. We prove that the existence of a Seifert component in a Haken manifold is a quasi-isometry invariant of its fundamental group.This research was partially supported by the grant SFB 256 Nichtlineare partielle Differentialgleichungen and the NSF grant DMS-9306140 (Kapovich).     

Canonical maps to twisted rings

If A is a strongly noetherian graded algebra generated in degree one, then there is a canonically constructed graded ring homomorphism from A to a twisted homogeneous coordinate ring , which is surjective in large degree. This result is a key step in the study of projectively simple rings. The proof relies on some results concerning the growth of graded rings which are of independent interest. D. Rogalski was partially supported by NSF grant DMS-0202479. J. J. Zhang was partially supported by NSF grant DMS-0245420 and Leverhulme Research Interchange Grant F/00158/X (UK).     

On the generalized twisted field planes of characteristic 2

Let be a non-Desarguesian semifield plane of order 2 ⁿ 2⁶, and letG be the autotopism group relative to an autotopism triangle . We prove that ifG acts transitively on the non-vertex points on a side of , then is a generalized twisted field plane. A characterization of the generalized twisted field planes of characteristic 2 is also given.Research supported in part by NSF Grants RII-9014056, component IV of the EPSCoR of Puerto Rico grant and ARO grant for Cornell MSI.Research supported in part by NSF Grant No. DMS-9107372.     

Liouville theorems for harmonic maps

Summary We prove several Liouville theorems for harmonic maps between certain classes of Riemannian manifolds. In particular, the results can be applied to harmonic maps from the Euclidean space (R ^m ,g ₀) to a large class of Riemannian manifolds. Our assumptions on the harmonic maps concern the asymptotic behavior of the maps at .Oblatum 28-XII-1990 & 11-II-1991Supported by NSF grant DMS-8610730     

Universal non-completely-continuous operators

A bounded linear operator between Banach spaces is calledcompletely continuous if it carries weakly convergent sequences into norm convergent sequences. Isolated is a universal operator for the class of non-completely-continuous operators fromL ₁ into an arbitrary Banach space, namely, the operator fromL ₁ into ⊆_∞ defined byT ₀(f) = (∫r _n f d μ) _n>-0, wherer _n is thenth Rademacher function. It is also shown that there does not exist a universal operator for the class of non-completely-continuous operators between two arbitrary Banach spaces. The proof uses the factorization theorem for weakly compact operators and a Tsirelson-like space. Supported in part by NSF grant DMS-9306460. Participant, NSF Workshop in Linear Analysis & Probability, Texas A&M University (supported in part by NSF grant DMS-9311902). Supported in part by NSF grant DMS-9003550.     

Partitioning Boolean lattices into chains of subsets

We prove that the Boolean lattice of all subsets of an n-set can be partitioned into chains of size four if and only if n9.Research supported in part by N.S.F. grant DMS-8401281.Research supported in part by N.S.F. grant DMS-8406451.     

Traps for reflected Brownian motion

Consider an open set , d ≥ 2, and a closed ball . Let denote the expectation of the hitting time of B for reflected Brownian motion in D starting from x ∈ D. We say that D is a trap domain if . A domain D is not a trap domain if and only if the reflecting Brownian motion in D is uniformly ergodic. We fully characterize the simply connected planar trap domains using a geometric condition and give a number of (less complete) results for d > 2. Research partially supported by NSF grant DMS-0303310. Research partially supported by NSF grant DMS-0303310. Research partially supported by NSF grant DMS-0201435.     

Stationary Symmetric <Emphasis Type="Italic">α</Emphasis>-Stable Discrete Parameter Random Fields

We establish a connection between the structure of a stationary symmetric α-stable random field (0<α<2) and ergodic theory of non-singular group actions, elaborating on a previous work by Rosiński (Ann. Probab. 28:1797–1813, 2000). With the help of this connection, we study the extreme values of the field over increasing boxes. Depending on the ergodic theoretical and group theoretical structures of the underlying action, we observe different kinds of asymptotic behavior of this sequence of extreme values. Supported in part by NSF grant DMS-0303493, NSA grant MSPF-05G-049 and NSF training grant “Graduate and Postdoctoral Training in Probability and Its Applications” at Cornell University.     

On integer points in polyhedra

We give an upper bound on the number of vertices ofP _I , the integer hull of a polyhedronP, in terms of the dimensionn of the space, the numberm of inequalities required to describeP, and the size of these inequalities. For fixedn the bound isO(m ^{n n–} ). We also describe an algorithm which determines the number of integer points in a polyhedron to within a multiplicative factor of 1+ in time polynomial inm, and 1/ when the dimensionn is fixed.Supported by Sonderfschungsbereich 303 (DFG) and NSF grant ECS-8611841.Partially supported by NSF grant DMS-8905645.Supported by NSF grants ECS-8418392 and CCR-8805199.mcd%vax.oxford.ac.uk     

Necessary and sufficient conditions for hyperplane transversals

We prove that a finite family ={B ₁,B ₂, ...,B _n } of connected compact sets in ^d has a hyperplane transversal if and only if for somek there exists a set of pointsP={p ₁,p ₂, ...,p _n } (i.e., ak-dimensional labeling of the family) which spans ^k and everyk+2 sets of are met by ak-flat consistent with the order type ofP. This is a common generalization of theorems of Hadwiger, Katchalski, Goodman-Pollack and Wenger.Supported in part by NSF grant DMS-8501947 and CCR-8901484, NSA grant MDA904-89-H-2030, and the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS), a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center, under NSF grant STC88-09648.Supported by the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada and DIMACS.     

Mixing automorphisms of compact groups and a theorem of Schlickewei

Summary We prove that every mixing ^d by automorphisms of a compact, connected, abelian group is mixing of all orders.Oblatum 5-II-1992The second author gratefully acknowledges support from NSF grant DMS-91-03056 at the Ohio State University