Local Maximum Modulus Property for Polyanalytic Functions

Let \(\Omega \subset {\mathbb {C}}\) be an open subset and let \({\mathcal {F}}\) be a space of functions defined on \(\Omega \). \({\mathcal {F}}\) is said to have the local maximum modulus property if: for every \(f\in {\mathcal {F}},p_0\in \Omega ,\) and for every sufficiently small domain \(D\subset \Omega ,\) with \(p_0\in D,\) it holds true that \(\max _{z\in \overline{D}}\left| f(z)\right| = \max _{z\in \Sigma \cup \partial D}\left| f(z)\right| ,\) where \(\Sigma \subset \Omega \) denotes the set of points at which \(\left| f\right| \) attains strict local maximum. This property fails for \({\mathcal {F}}=C^{\infty }.\) We verify it however for the set of complex-valued functions whose real and imaginary parts are real analytic. We show by example that the property cannot be improved upon whenever \({\mathcal {F}}\) is the set of n-analytic functions on \(\Omega \), \(n\ge 2,\) in the sense that locality cannot be removed as a condition and independently \(\Sigma \) cannot be removed from the conclusion.     

A Tight Upper Bound on Acquaintance Time of Graphs

In this note we confirm a conjecture raised by Benjamini et al. (SIAM J Discrete Math 28(2):767–785, 2014) on the acquaintance time of graphs, proving that for all graphs G with n vertices it holds that \(\mathcal {AC}(G) = O(n^{3/2})\). This is done by proving that for all graphs G with n vertices and maximum degree \(\varDelta \) it holds that \(\mathcal {AC}(G) \le 20 \varDelta n\). Combining this with the bound \(\mathcal {AC}(G) \le O(n^2/\varDelta )\) from Benjamini et al. (SIAM J Discrete Math 28(2):767–785, 2014) gives the uniform upper bound of \(O(n^{3/2})\) for all n-vertex graphs. This bound is tight up to a multiplicative constant. We also prove that for the n-vertex path \(P_n\) it holds that \(\mathcal {AC}(P_n)=n-2\). In addition we show that the barbell graph \(B_n\) consisting of two cliques of sizes \({\lceil n/2\rceil }\) and \({\lfloor n/2\rfloor }\) connected by a single edge also has \(\mathcal {AC}(B_n) = n-2\). This shows that it is possible to add \(\varOmega (n^2\)) edges a graph without changing its \(\mathcal {AC}\) value.     

Regularity for Inhomogeneous Dirichlet Problems of Some Schrödinger Equations on Domains

Let \(n\ge 3, \Omega \) be a bounded, simply connected and semiconvex domain in \({\mathbb {R}}^n\) and \(L_{\Omega }:=-\Delta +V\) a Schrödinger operator on \(L^2 (\Omega )\) with the Dirichlet boundary condition, where \(\Delta \) denotes the Laplace operator and the potential \(0\le V\) belongs to the reverse Hölder class \(RH_{q_0}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) for some \(q_0\in (\max \{n/2,2\},\infty ]\). Assume that the growth function \(\varphi :\,{\mathbb {R}}^n\times [0,\infty ) \rightarrow [0,\infty )\) satisfies that \(\varphi (x,\cdot )\) is an Orlicz function and \(\varphi (\cdot ,t)\in {\mathbb {A}}_{\infty }({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) (the class of uniformly Muckenhoupt weights). Let \(H_{\varphi ,\,L_{{\mathbb {R}}^n},\,r}(\Omega )\) be the Musielak–Orlicz–Hardy space whose elements are restrictions of elements of the Musielak–Orlicz–Hardy space, associated with \(L_{{\mathbb {R}}^n}:=-\Delta +V\) on \({\mathbb {R}}^n\), to \(\Omega \). In this article, the authors show that the operators \(VL^{-1}_\Omega \) and \(\nabla ^2L^{-1}_\Omega \) are bounded from \(L^1(\Omega )\) to weak-\(L^1(\Omega )\), from \(L^p(\Omega )\) to itself, with \(p\in (1,2]\), and also from \(H_{\varphi ,\,L_{{\mathbb {R}}^n},\,r}(\Omega )\) to the Musielak–Orlicz space \(L^\varphi (\Omega )\) or to \(H_{\varphi ,\,L_{{\mathbb {R}}^n},\,r}(\Omega )\) itself. As applications, the boundedness of \(\nabla ^2{\mathbb {G}}_D\) on \(L^p(\Omega )\), with \(p\in (1,2]\), and from \(H_{\varphi ,\,L_{{\mathbb {R}}^n},\,r}(\Omega )\) to \(L^\varphi (\Omega )\) or to \(H_{\varphi ,\,L_{{\mathbb {R}}^n},\,r}(\Omega )\) itself is obtained, where \({\mathbb {G}}_D\) denotes the Dirichlet Green operator associated with \(L_\Omega \). All these results are new even for the Hardy space \(H^1_{L_{{\mathbb {R}}^n},\,r}(\Omega )\), which is just \(H_{\varphi ,\,L_{{\mathbb {R}}^n},\,r}(\Omega )\) with \(\varphi (x,t):=t\) for all \(x\in {\mathbb {R}}^n\) and \(t\in [0,\infty )\).     

Partial regularity and smooth topology-preserving approximations of rough domains

For a bounded domain \(\Omega \subset {\mathbb R}^m, m\ge 2,\) of class \(C^0\), the properties are studied of fields of ‘good directions’, that is the directions with respect to which \(\partial \Omega \) can be locally represented as the graph of a continuous function. For any such domain there is a canonical smooth field of good directions defined in a suitable neighbourhood of \(\partial \Omega \), in terms of which a corresponding flow can be defined. Using this flow it is shown that \(\Omega \) can be approximated from the inside and the outside by diffeomorphic domains of class \(C^\infty \). Whether or not the image of a general continuous field of good directions (pseudonormals) defined on \(\partial \Omega \) is the whole of \(S^{m-1}\) is shown to depend on the topology of \(\Omega \). These considerations are used to prove that if \(m=2,3\), or if \(\Omega \) has nonzero Euler characteristic, there is a point \(P\in \partial \Omega \) in the neighbourhood of which \(\partial \Omega \) is Lipschitz. The results provide new information even for more regular domains, with Lipschitz or smooth boundaries.     

On Reachable Families of the Loewner Differential Equation in Several Complex Variables

Graham, Hamada, Kohr and Kohr studied the normalized time \(T\) reachable families \(\widetilde{\mathcal {R}}_T(id_{{\mathbb {B}}^n},\Omega )\) of the Loewner differential equation, which are generated by the Carathéodory mappings with values in a subfamily \(\Omega \) of the Carathéodory family \({\mathcal {N}}_A\) for the Euclidean unit ball \({\mathbb {B}}^n\), where \(A\) is a linear operator with \(k_+(A)<2m(A)\) (\(k_+(A)\) is the Lyapunov index of \(A\) and \(m(A)=\min \{\mathfrak {R}\left\langle Az,z\right\rangle \big |z\in {\mathbb {C}}^n,\Vert z\Vert =1\}\)). They obtained some compactness and density results, as generalizations of related results due to Roth, and conjectured that if \(\Omega \) is compact and convex, then \(\widetilde{\mathcal {R}}_T(id_{{\mathbb {B}}^n},\Omega )\) is compact and \(\widetilde{\mathcal {R}}_T(id_{{\mathbb {B}}^n},ex\,\Omega )\) is dense in \(\widetilde{\mathcal {R}}_T(id_{{\mathbb {B}}^n},\Omega )\), where \(ex\,\Omega \) denotes the corresponding set of extreme points and \(T\in [0,\infty ]\). We confirm this, by embedding the Carathéodory mappings in a suitable Bochner space.     

Mean curvature bounds and eigenvalues of Robin Laplacians

We consider the Laplacian with attractive Robin boundary conditions,

$$\begin{aligned} Q^\Omega _\alpha u=-\Delta u, \quad \dfrac{\partial u}{\partial n}=\alpha u \text { on } \partial \Omega , \end{aligned}$$

in a class of bounded smooth domains \(\Omega \in \mathbb {R}^\nu \); here \(n\) is the outward unit normal and \(\alpha >0\) is a constant. We show that for each \(j\in \mathbb {N}\) and \(\alpha \rightarrow +\infty \), the \(j\)th eigenvalue \(E_j(Q^\Omega _\alpha )\) has the asymptotics

$$\begin{aligned} E_j(Q^\Omega _\alpha )=-\alpha ^2 -(\nu -1)H_\mathrm {max}(\Omega )\,\alpha +{\mathcal O}(\alpha ^{2/3}), \end{aligned}$$

where \(H_\mathrm {max}(\Omega )\) is the maximum mean curvature at \(\partial \Omega \). The discussion of the reverse Faber-Krahn inequality gives rise to a new geometric problem concerning the minimization of \(H_\mathrm {max}\). In particular, we show that the ball is the strict minimizer of \(H_\mathrm {max}\) among the smooth star-shaped domains of a given volume, which leads to the following result: if \(B\) is a ball and \(\Omega \) is any other star-shaped smooth domain of the same volume, then for any fixed \(j\in \mathbb {N}\) we have \(E_j(Q^B_\alpha )>E_j(Q^\Omega _\alpha )\) for large \(\alpha \). An open question concerning a larger class of domains is formulated.

     

Quasilinear equations with natural growth in the gradients in spaces of Sobolev multipliers

We study the existence problem for a class of nonlinear elliptic equations whose prototype is of the form \(-\Delta _p u = |\nabla u|^p + \sigma \) in a bounded domain \(\Omega \subset \mathbb {R}^n\). Here \(\Delta _p\), \(p>1\), is the standard p-Laplacian operator defined by \(\Delta _p u=\mathrm{div}\, (|\nabla u|^{p-2}\nabla u)\), and the datum \(\sigma \) is a signed distribution in \(\Omega \). The class of solutions that we are interested in consists of functions \(u\in W^{1,p}_0(\Omega )\) such that \(|\nabla u|\in M(W^{1,p}(\Omega )\rightarrow L^p(\Omega ))\), a space pointwise Sobolev multipliers consisting of functions \(f\in L^{p}(\Omega )\) such that

$$\begin{aligned} \int _{\Omega } |f|^{p} |\varphi |^p dx \le C \int _{\Omega } (|\nabla \varphi |^p + |\varphi |^p) dx \quad \forall \varphi \in C^\infty (\Omega ), \end{aligned}$$

for some \(C>0\). This is a natural class of solutions at least when the distribution \(\sigma \) is nonnegative and compactly supported in \(\Omega \). We show essentially that, with only a gap in the smallness constants, the above equation has a solution in this class if and only if one can write \(\sigma =\mathrm{div}\, F\) for a vector field F such that \(|F|^{\frac{1}{p-1}}\in M(W^{1,p}(\Omega )\rightarrow L^p(\Omega ))\). As an important application, via the exponential transformation \(u\mapsto v=e^{\frac{u}{p-1}}\), we obtain an existence result for the quasilinear equation of Schrödinger type \(-\Delta _p v = \sigma \, v^{p-1}\), \(v\ge 0\) in \(\Omega \), and \(v=1\) on \(\partial \Omega \), which is interesting in its own right.

     

The effect of the domain topology on the number of solutions of fractional Laplace problems

In this paper we are concerned with the multiplicity of solutions for the following fractional Laplace problem

$$\begin{aligned} \left\{ \begin{array}{ll} (-\Delta )^{s}u= \mu |u|^{q-2}u + |u|^{2^*_s-2}u &{}\quad \text{ in } \Omega \\ u=0 &{}\quad \text{ in } {\mathbb {R}}^n{\setminus } \Omega , \end{array}\right. \end{aligned}$$

where \(\Omega \subset {\mathbb {R}}^n\) is an open bounded set with continuous boundary, \(n>2s\) with \(s\in (0,1),(-\Delta )^{s}\) is the fractional Laplacian operator, \(\mu \) is a positive real parameter, \(q\in [2, 2^*_s)\) and \(2^*_s=2n/(n-2s)\) is the fractional critical Sobolev exponent. Using the Lusternik–Schnirelman theory, we relate the number of nontrivial solutions of the problem under consideration with the topology of \(\Omega \). Precisely, we show that the problem has at least \(cat_{\Omega }(\Omega )\) nontrivial solutions, provided that \(q=2\) and \(n\geqslant 4s\) or \(q\in (2, 2^*_s)\) and \(n>2s(q+2)/q\), extending the validity of well-known results for the classical Laplace equation to the fractional nonlocal setting.

     

Computing the Permanent of (Some) Complex Matrices

We present a deterministic algorithm, which, for any given \(0< \epsilon < 1\) and an \(n \times n\) real or complex matrix \(A=\left( a_{ij}\right) \) such that \(\left| a_{ij}-1 \right| \le 0.19\) for all \(i, j\) computes the permanent of \(A\) within relative error \(\epsilon \) in \(n^{O\left( \ln n -\ln \epsilon \right) }\) time. The method can be extended to computing hafnians and multidimensional permanents.     

Spectral density estimates with partial symmetries and an application to Bahri–Lions-type results

We are concerned with the existence of infinitely many solutions for the problem \(-\Delta u=|u|^{p-2}u+f\) in \(\Omega \), \(u=u_0\) on \(\partial \Omega \), where \(\Omega \) is a bounded domain in \(\mathbb {R}^N\), \(N\ge 3\). This can be seen as a perturbation of the problem with \(f=0\) and \(u_0=0\), which is odd in u. If \(\Omega \) is invariant with respect to a closed strict subgroup of O(N), then we prove infinite existence for all functions f and \(u_0\) in certain spaces of invariant functions for a larger range of exponents p than known before. In order to achieve this, we prove Lieb–Cwikel–Rosenbljum-type bounds for invariant potentials on \(\Omega \), employing improved Sobolev embeddings for spaces of invariant functions.     

On generalized Ramanujan primes

Let \(\Delta = \sum _{m=0}^\infty q^{(2m+1)^2} \in \mathbf {F}_2[[q]]\) be the reduction mod 2 of the \(\Delta \) series. A modular form of level 1, \(f=\sum _{n\geqslant 0} c(n) \,q^n\), with integer coefficients, is congruent modulo \(2\) to a polynomial in \(\Delta \). Let us set \(W_f(x)=\sum _{n\leqslant x,\ c(n)\text { odd }} 1\), the number of odd Fourier coefficients of \(f\) of index \(\leqslant x\). The order of magnitude of \(W_f(x)\) (for \(x\rightarrow \infty \)) has been determined by Serre in the seventies. Here, we give an asymptotic equivalent for \(W_f(x)\). Let \(p(n)\) be the partition function and \(A_0(x)\) (resp. \(A_1(x)\)) be the number of \(n\leqslant x\) such that \(p(n)\) is even (resp. odd). In the preceding papers, the second-named author has shown that \(A_0(x)\geqslant 0.28 \sqrt{x\;\log \log x}\) for \(x\geqslant 3\) and \(A_1(x)>\frac{4.57 \sqrt{x}}{\log x}\) for \(x\geqslant 7\). Here, it is proved that \(A_0(x)\geqslant 0.069 \sqrt{x}\;\log \log x\) holds for \(x>1\) and that \(A_1(x) \geqslant \frac{0.037 \sqrt{x}}{(\log x)^{7/8}}\) holds for \(x\geqslant 2\). The main tools used to prove these results are the determination of the order of nilpotence of a modular form of level-\(1\) modulo \(2\), and of the structure of the space of those modular forms as a module over the Hecke algebra, which have been given in a recent work of Serre and the second-named author.     

The maximally symmetric surfaces in the 3-torus

Suppose an orientation-preserving action of a finite group G on the closed surface \(\Sigma _g\) of genus \(g>1\) extends over the 3-torus \(T^3\) for some embedding \(\Sigma _g\subset T^3\). Then \(|G|\le 12(g-1)\), and this upper bound \(12(g-1)\) can be achieved for \(g=n^2+1, 3n^2+1, 2n^3+1, 4n^3+1, 8n^3+1, n\in {\mathbb {Z}}_+\). The surfaces in \(T^3\) realizing a maximal symmetry can be either unknotted or knotted. Similar problems in the non-orientable category are also discussed. The connection with minimal surfaces in \(T^3\) is addressed and the situation when the maximally symmetric surfaces above can be realized by minimal surfaces is identified.     

Eigenvalue Counting Function for Robin Laplacians on Conical Domains

We study the discrete spectrum of the Robin Laplacian \(Q^{\Omega }_\alpha \) in \(L^2(\Omega )\), \(u\mapsto -\Delta u, \quad D_n u=\alpha u \text { on }\partial \Omega \), where \(D_n\) is the outer unit normal derivative and \(\Omega \subset {\mathbb {R}}^{3}\) is a conical domain with a regular cross-section \(\Theta \subset {\mathbb {S}}^2\), n is the outer unit normal, and \(\alpha >0\) is a fixed constant. It is known from previous papers that the bottom of the essential spectrum of \(Q^{\Omega }_\alpha \) is \(-\alpha ^2\) and that the finiteness of the discrete spectrum depends on the geometry of the cross-section. We show that the accumulation of the discrete spectrum of \(Q^\Omega _\alpha \) is determined by the discrete spectrum of an effective Hamiltonian defined on the boundary and far from the origin. By studying this model operator, we prove that the number of eigenvalues of \(Q^{\Omega }_\alpha \) in \((-\infty ,-\alpha ^2-\lambda )\), with \(\lambda >0\), behaves for \(\lambda \rightarrow 0\) as

$$\begin{aligned} \dfrac{\alpha ^2}{8\pi \lambda } \int _{\partial \Theta } \kappa _+(s)^2\mathrm {d}s +o\left( \frac{1}{\lambda }\right) , \end{aligned}$$

where \(\kappa _+\) is the positive part of the geodesic curvature of the cross-section boundary.

     

Multiple positive solutions of the stationary Keller–Segel system

We consider the stationary Keller–Segel equation

$$\begin{aligned} {\left\{ \begin{array}{ll} -\Delta v+v=\lambda e^v, \quad v>0 \quad &{} \text {in }\Omega ,\\ \partial _\nu v=0 &{}\text {on } \partial \Omega , \end{array}\right. } \end{aligned}$$

where \(\Omega \) is a ball. In the regime \(\lambda \rightarrow 0\), we study the radial bifurcations and we construct radial solutions by a gluing variational method. For any given \(n\in \mathbb {N}_0\), we build a solution having multiple layers at \(r_1,\ldots ,r_n\) by which we mean that the solutions concentrate on the spheres of radii \(r_i\) as \(\lambda \rightarrow 0\) (for all \(i=1,\ldots ,n\)). A remarkable fact is that, in opposition to previous known results, the layers of the solutions do not accumulate to the boundary of \(\Omega \) as \(\lambda \rightarrow 0\). Instead they satisfy an optimal partition problem in the limit.

     

On the approximation of dynamical indicators in systems with nonuniformly hyperbolic behavior

Let f be a \(C^{1+\alpha }\) diffeomorphism of a compact Riemannian manifold and \(\mu \) an ergodic hyperbolic measure with positive entropy. We prove that for every continuous potential \(\phi \) there exists a sequence of basic sets \(\Omega _n\) such that the topological pressure \(P(f|\Omega _n,\phi )\) converges to the free energy \(P_{\mu }(\phi ) = h(\mu ) + \int \phi {d\mu }\). We also prove that for a suitable class of potentials \(\phi \) there exists a sequence of basic sets \(\Omega _n\) such that \(P(f|\Omega _n,\phi ) \rightarrow P(\phi )\).     

Lifting Maps from the Symmetrized Polydisc in Small Dimensions

The spectral unit ball \(\Omega _n\) is the set of all \(n\times n\) matrices M with spectral radius less than 1. Let \(\pi (M) \in \mathbb {C}^n\) stand for the coefficients of the characteristic polynomial of a matrix M (up to signs), i.e. the elementary symmetric functions of its eigenvalues. The symmetrized polydisc is \({{\mathbb {G}}}_n:=\pi (\Omega _n)\). When investigating Nevanlinna–Pick problems for maps from the disk to the spectral ball, it is often useful to project the map to the symmetrized polydisc (for instance to obtain continuity results for the Lempert function): if \(\Phi \in {\mathrm {Hol}}(\mathbb {D}, \Omega _n)\), then \(\pi \circ \Phi \in {\mathrm {Hol}}(\mathbb {D}, {{\mathbb {G}}}_n)\). Given a map \(\varphi \in {\mathrm {Hol}}(\mathbb {D}, {{\mathbb {G}}}_n)\), we are looking for necessary and sufficient conditions for this map to “lift through given matrices”, i.e. find \(\Phi \) as above so that \(\pi \circ \Phi = \varphi \) and \(\Phi (\alpha _j) = A_j\), \(1\le j \le N\). A natural necessary condition is \(\varphi (\alpha _j)=\pi (A_j)\), \(1\le j \le N\). When the matrices \(A_j\) are derogatory (i.e. do not admit a cyclic vector) new necessary conditions appear, involving derivatives of \(\varphi \) at the points \(\alpha _j\). We prove that those conditions are necessary and sufficient for a local lifting. We give a formula which performs the global lifting in small dimensions (\(n \le 5\)), and a counter-example to show that the formula fails in dimensions 6 and above.     

The Cheeger constant of a Jordan domain without necks

We show that the maximal Cheeger set of a Jordan domain \(\Omega \) without necks is the union of all balls of radius \(r = h(\Omega )^{-1}\) contained in \(\Omega \). Here, \(h(\Omega )\) denotes the Cheeger constant of \(\Omega \), that is, the infimum of the ratio of perimeter over area among subsets of \(\Omega \), and a Cheeger set is a set attaining the infimum. The radius r is shown to be the unique number such that the area of the inner parallel set \(\Omega ^r\) is equal to \(\pi r^2\). The proof of the main theorem requires the combination of several intermediate facts, some of which are of interest in their own right. Examples are given demonstrating the generality of the result as well as the sharpness of our assumptions. In particular, as an application of the main theorem, we illustrate how to effectively approximate the Cheeger constant of the Koch snowflake.     

The log-behavior of $$\root n \of {p(n)}$$ and $$\root n \of {p(n)/n}$$p(n)/nn

Let p(n) denote the partition function and let \(\Delta \) be the difference operator with respect to n. In this paper, we obtain a lower bound for \(\Delta ^2\log \root n-1 \of {p(n-1)/(n-1)}\), leading to a proof of a conjecture of Sun on the log-convexity of \(\{\root n \of {p(n)/n}\}_{n\ge 60}\). Using the same argument, it can be shown that for any real number \(\alpha \), there exists an integer \(n(\alpha )\) such that the sequence \(\{\root n \of {p(n)/n^{\alpha }}\}_{n\ge n(\alpha )}\) is log-convex. Moreover, we show that \(\lim \limits _{n \rightarrow +\infty }n^{\frac{5}{2}}\Delta ^2\log \root n \of {p(n)}=3\pi /\sqrt{24}\). Finally, by finding an upper bound for \(\Delta ^2 \log \root n-1 \of {p(n-1)}\), we establish an inequality on the ratio \(\frac{\root n-1 \of {p(n-1)}}{\root n \of {p(n)}}\).     

Subconvexity for sup-norms of cusp forms on $$\mathrm{PGL}(n)$$

Let F be an \(L^2\)-normalized Hecke Maaß cusp form for \(\Gamma _0(N) \subseteq {\mathrm{SL}}_{n}({\mathbb {Z}})\) with Laplace eigenvalue \(\lambda _F\). If \(\Omega \) is a compact subset of \(\Gamma _0(N)\backslash {\mathrm{PGL}}_n/\mathrm{PO}_{n}\), we show the bound \(\Vert F|_{\Omega }\Vert _{\infty } \ll _{ \Omega } N^{\varepsilon } \lambda _F^{n(n-1)/8 - \delta }\) for some constant \(\delta = \delta _n> 0\) depending only on n.     

Estimates for large solutions of a quasilinear elliptic equation

Let \(\Omega \) be a bounded smooth domain of \(R^{n}\). We study the asymptotic behaviour of the solutions to the equation \(\triangle u-|Du|^{q}=f(u)\) in \(\Omega , 1<q<2,\) which satisfy the boundary condition \(u(x)\rightarrow \infty \) as \(x\rightarrow \partial \Omega \). These solutions are called large or blowup solutions. Near the boundary we give lower and upper bounds for the ratio \(\psi (u)/\delta \), where \(\psi (u) = \int _{u}^{\infty }1/\sqrt{2F}dt\), \(F'=f\), \(\delta =dist(x,\partial \Omega )\) or for the ratio \(u/\delta ^{(2-q)/(1-q)}\). When in particular the ratio \(f/F^{q/2}\)is regular at infinity, we find again known results (Bandle and Giarrusso, in Adv Diff Equ 1, 133–150, 1996; Giarrusso, in Comptes Rendus de l’Acad Sci 331, 777–782 2000).