A Helly-type theorem for intersections of orthogonally starshaped sets in \mathbb R^d

Let $\mathcal K$ be a finite family of orthogonal polytopes in $\mathbb R^d$ such that, for every nonempty subfamily $\mathcal K^\prime $ of $\mathcal K, \cap \{K : K$ in $\mathcal K^\prime \}$ , if nonempty, is a finite union of boxes whose intersection graph is a tree. Assume that every $d + 1$ (not necessarily distinct) members of $\mathcal K$ meet in a (nonempty) staircase starshaped set. Then $S \equiv \cap \{ K : K$ in $\mathcal K\}$ is nonempty and staircase starshaped.     

Variance asymptotics for random polytopes in smooth convex bodies

Let $K \subset \mathbb R ^d$ be a smooth convex set and let $\mathcal{P }_{\lambda }$ be a Poisson point process on $\mathbb R ^d$ of intensity ${\lambda }$ . The convex hull of $\mathcal{P }_{\lambda }\cap K$ is a random convex polytope $K_{\lambda }$ . As ${\lambda }\rightarrow \infty $ , we show that the variance of the number of $k$ -dimensional faces of $K_{\lambda }$ , when properly scaled, converges to a scalar multiple of the affine surface area of $K$ . Similar asymptotics hold for the variance of the number of $k$ -dimensional faces for the convex hull of a binomial process in $K$ .     

Actions of arithmetic groups on homology spheres and acyclic homology manifolds

We establish lower bounds on the dimensions in which arithmetic groups with torsion can act on acyclic manifolds and homology spheres. The bounds rely on the existence of elementary $p$ -groups in the groups concerned. In some cases, including ${\mathrm{Sp}}(2n,\mathbb Z )$ , the bounds we obtain are sharp: if $X$ is a generalized $\mathbb Z /3$ -homology sphere of dimension less than $2n-1$ or a $\mathbb Z /3$ -acyclic $\mathbb Z /3$ -homology manifold of dimension less than $2n$ , and if $n\ge 3$ , then any action of ${\mathrm{Sp}}(2n,\mathbb Z )$ by homeomorphisms on $X$ is trivial; if $n=2$ , then every action of ${\mathrm{Sp}}(2n,\mathbb Z )$ on $X$ factors through the abelianization of ${\mathrm{Sp}}(4,\mathbb Z )$ , which is $\mathbb Z /2$ .     

Approximate Hermitian–Einstein connections on principal bundles over a compact Riemann surface

Let $X$ be a compact connected Riemann surface and $G$ a connected reductive complex affine algebraic group. Given a holomorphic principal $G$ -bundle $E_G$ over $X$ , we construct a $C^\infty $ Hermitian structure on $E_G$ together with a $1$ -parameter family of $C^\infty $ automorphisms $\{F_t\}_{t\in \mathbb R }$ of the principal $G$ -bundle $E_G$ with the following property: Let $\nabla ^t$ be the connection on $E_G$ corresponding to the Hermitian structure and the new holomorphic structure on $E_G$ constructed using $F_t$ from the original holomorphic structure. As $t\rightarrow -\infty $ , the connection $\nabla ^t$ converges in $C^\infty $ Fréchet topology to the connection on $E_G$ given by the Hermitian–Einstein connection on the polystable principal bundle associated to $E_G$ . In particular, as $t\rightarrow -\infty $ , the curvature of $\nabla ^t$ converges in $C^\infty $ Fréchet topology to the curvature of the connection on $E_G$ given by the Hermitian–Einstein connection on the polystable principal bundle associated to $E_G$ . The family $\{F_t\}_{t\in \mathbb R }$ is constructed by generalizing the method of [6]. Given a holomorphic vector bundle $E$ on $X$ , in [6] a $1$ -parameter family of $C^\infty $ automorphisms of $E$ is constructed such that as $t\rightarrow -\infty $ , the curvature converges, in $C^0$ topology, to the curvature of the Hermitian–Einstein connection of the associated graded bundle.     

Growth estimates for orbits of self-adjoint groups

Let $G$ denote a closed, connected, self-adjoint, noncompact subgroup of $GL(n,\mathbb R )$ , and let $d_{R}$ and $d_{L}$ denote respectively the right and left invariant Riemannian metrics defined by the canonical inner product on $M(n,\mathbb R ) = T_{I} GL(n,\mathbb R )$ . Let $v$ be a nonzero vector of $\mathbb R ^{n}$ such that the orbit $G(v)$ is unbounded in $\mathbb R ^{n}$ . Then the function $g \rightarrow d_{R}(g, G_{v})$ is unbounded, where $G_{v} = \{g \in G : g(v) = v \}$ , and we obtain algebraically defined upper and lower bounds $\lambda ^{+}(v)$ and $\lambda ^{-}(v)$ for the asymptotic behavior of the function $\frac{log|g(v)|}{d_{R}(g, G_{v})}$ as $d_{R}(g, G_{v}) \rightarrow \infty $ . The upper bound $\lambda ^{+}(v)$ is at most 1. The orbit $G(v)$ is closed in $\mathbb R ^{n} \Leftrightarrow \lambda ^{-}(w)$ is positive for some w $\in G(v)$ . If $G_{v}$ is compact, then $g \rightarrow |d_{R}(g,I) - d_{L}(g,I)|$ is uniformly bounded in $G$ , and the exponents $\lambda ^{+}(v)$ and $\lambda ^{-}(v)$ are sharp upper and lower asymptotic bounds for the functions $\frac{log|g(v)|}{d_{R}(g,I)}$ and $\frac{log|g(v)|}{d_{L}(g,I)}$ as $d_{R}(g,I) \rightarrow \infty $ or as $d_{L}(g,I) \rightarrow \infty $ . However, we show by example that if $G_{v}$ is noncompact, then there need not exist asymptotic upper and lower bounds for the function $\frac{log|g(v)|}{d_{L}(g, G_{v})}$ as $d_{L}(g, G_{v}) \rightarrow \infty $ . The results apply to representations of noncompact semisimple Lie groups $G$ on finite dimensional real vector spaces. We compute $\lambda ^{+}$ and $\lambda ^{-}$ for the irreducible, real representations of $SL(2,\mathbb R )$ , and we show that if the dimension of the $SL(2,\mathbb R )$ -module $V$ is odd, then $\lambda ^{+} = \lambda ^{-}$ on a nonempty open subset of $V$ . We show that the function $\lambda ^{-}$ is $K$ -invariant, where $K = O(n,\mathbb R ) \cap G$ . We do not know if $\lambda ^{-}$ is $G$ -invariant.     

On smooth extensions of vector-valued functions defined on closed subsets of Banach spaces

Let $X$ and $ Z$ be Banach spaces, $A$ a closed subset of $X$ and a mapping $f:A\rightarrow Z$ . We give necessary and sufficient conditions to obtain a $C^1$ smooth mapping $F:X \rightarrow Z$ such that $F_{\mid _A}=f$ , when either (i) $X$ and $Z$ are Hilbert spaces and $X$ is separable, or (ii) $X^*$ is separable and $Z$ is an absolute Lipschitz retract, or (iii) $X=L_2$ and $Z=L_p$ with $1<p<2$ , or (iv) $X=L_p$ and $Z=L_2$ with $2<p<\infty $ , where $L_p$ is any separable Banach space $L_p(S,\Sigma ,\mu )$ with $(S,\Sigma ,\mu )$ a $\sigma $ -finite measure space.     

Sharp weak type estimates for Riesz transforms

Let $d$ be a given positive integer and let $\{R_j\}_{j=1}^d$ denote the collection of Riesz transforms on $\mathbb {R}^d$ . For $1<p<\infty $ , we determine the best constant $C_p$ such that the following holds. For any locally integrable function $f$ on $\mathbb {R}^d$ and any $j\in \{1,\,2,\,\ldots ,\,d\}$ , $$\begin{aligned} ||(R_jf)_+||_{L^{p,\infty }(\mathbb {R}^d)}\le C_p||f||_{L^{p,\infty }(\mathbb {R}^d)}. \end{aligned}$$ A related statement for Riesz transforms on spheres is also established. The proofs exploit Gundy–Varopoulos representation of Riesz transforms and appropriate inequality for orthogonal martingales.     

Quenched to annealed transition in the parabolic Anderson problem

We study limit behavior for sums of the form $\frac{1}{|\Lambda_{L|}}\sum_{x\in \Lambda_{L}}u(t,x),$ where the field $\Lambda_L=\left\{x\in {\bf{Z^d}}:|x|\le L\right\}$ is composed of solutions of the parabolic Anderson equation $$u(t,x) = 1 + \kappa \mathop{\int}_{0}^{t} \Delta u(s,x){\rm d}s + \mathop{\int}_{0}^{t}u(s,x)\partial B_{x}(s). $$ The index set is a box in Z ^d , namely $\Lambda_{L} = \left\{x\in {\bf Z}^{\bf d} : |x| \leq L\right\}$ and L = L(t) is a nondecreasing function $L : [0,\infty)\rightarrow {\bf R}^{+}. $ We identify two critical parameters $\eta(1) < \eta(2)$ such that for $\gamma > \eta(1)$ and L(t) = e^{γ t} , the sums $\frac{1}{|\Lambda_L|}\sum_{x\in \Lambda_L}u(t,x)$ satisfy a law of large numbers, or put another way, they exhibit annealed behavior. For $\gamma > \eta(2)$ and L(t) = e^{γ t} , one has $\sum_{x\in \Lambda_L}u(t,x)$ when properly normalized and centered satisfies a central limit theorem. For subexponential scales, that is when $\lim_{t \rightarrow \infty} \frac{1}{t}\ln L(t) = 0,$ quenched asymptotics occur. That means $\lim_{t\rightarrow \infty}\frac{1}{t}\ln\left (\frac{1}{|\Lambda_L|}\sum_{x\in \Lambda_L}u(t,x)\right) = \gamma(\kappa),$ where $\gamma(\kappa)$ is the almost sure Lyapunov exponent, i.e. $\lim_{t\rightarrow \infty}\frac{1}{t}\ln u(t,x)= \gamma(\kappa).$ We also examine the behavior of $\frac{1}{|\Lambda_L|}\sum_{x\in \Lambda_L}u(t,x)$ for L = e ^{γ t} with γ in the transition range $(0,\eta(1))$      

Parabolic power concavity and parabolic boundary value problems

This paper is concerned with power concavity properties of the solution to the parabolic boundary value problem $$\begin{aligned} (P)\quad \left\{ \begin{array}{l@{\quad }l} \partial _t u=\varDelta u +f(x,t,u,\nabla u) &{} \text{ in }\quad \varOmega \times (0,\infty ),\\ u(x,t)=0 &{} \text{ on }\quad \partial \varOmega \times (0,\infty ),\\ u(x,0)=0 &{} \text{ in }\quad \varOmega , \end{array} \right. \end{aligned}$$ where $\varOmega $ is a bounded convex domain in $\mathbf{R}^n$ and $f$ is a nonnegative continuous function in $\varOmega \times (0,\infty )\times \mathbf{R}\times \mathbf{R}^n$ . We give a sufficient condition for the solution of $(P)$ to be parabolically power concave in $\overline{\varOmega }\times [0,\infty )$ .     

Optimal Reconstruction Might be Hard

Given as input a point set $\mathcal S $ that samples a shape $\mathcal A $ , the condition required for inferring Betti numbers of $\mathcal A $ from $\mathcal S $ in polynomial time is much weaker than the conditions required by any known polynomial time algorithm for producing a topologically correct approximation of $\mathcal A $ from $\mathcal S $ . Under the former condition which we call the weak precondition, we investigate the question whether a polynomial time algorithm for reconstruction exists. As a first step, we provide an algorithm which outputs an approximation of the shape with the correct Betti numbers under a slightly stronger condition than the weak precondition. Unfortunately, even though our algorithm terminates, its time complexity is unbounded. We then identify at the heart of our algorithm a test which requires answering the following question: given 2 two-dimensional simplicial complexes $L \subset K$ , does there exist a simplicial complex containing $L$ and contained in $K$ which realizes the persistent homology of $L$ into $K$ ? We call this problem the homological simplification of the pair $(K,L)$ and prove that this problem is NP-complete, using a reduction from 3SAT.     

Rank-two stable sheaves with odd determinant on Fano threefolds of genus nine

According to Mukai and Iliev, a smooth prime Fano threefold $X$ of genus $9$ is associated with a surface $\mathbb{P }(\mathcal{V })$ , ruled over a smooth plane quartic $\varGamma $ , and the derived category of $\varGamma $ embeds into that of $X$ by a theorem of Kuznetsov. We use this setup to study the moduli spaces of rank- $2$ stable sheaves on $X$ with odd determinant. For each $c_2 \ge 7$ , we prove that a component of their moduli space $\mathsf{M}_X(2,1,c_2)$ is birational to a Brill–Noether locus of vector bundles with fixed rank and degree on $\varGamma $ , having enough sections when twisted by $\mathcal{V }$ . For $c_2=7$ , we prove that $\mathsf{M}_X(2,1,7)$ is isomorphic to the blow-up of the Picard variety $\text{ Pic}^{2}({\varGamma })$ along the curve parametrizing lines contained in $X$ .     

Lax embeddings of the Hermitian unital

In this paper, we prove that every lax generalized Veronesean embedding of the Hermitian unital ${\mathcal{U}}$ of ${\mathsf{PG}(2,\mathbb{L}), \mathbb{L}}$ a quadratic extension of the field ${\mathbb{K}}$ and ${|\mathbb{K}| \geq 3}$ , in a ${\mathsf{PG}(d,\mathbb{F})}$ , with ${\mathbb{F}}$ any field and d ≥ 7, such that disjoint blocks span disjoint subspaces, is the standard Veronesean embedding in a subgeometry ${\mathsf{PG}(7,\mathbb{K}^{\prime})}$ of ${\mathsf{PG}(7,\mathbb{F})}$ (and d = 7) or it consists of the projection from a point ${p \in \mathcal{U}}$ of ${\mathcal{U}{\setminus} \{p\}}$ from a subgeometry ${\mathsf{PG}(7,\mathbb{K}^{\prime})}$ of ${\mathsf{PG}(7,\mathbb{F})}$ into a hyperplane ${\mathsf{PG}(6,\mathbb{K}^{\prime})}$ . In order to do so, when ${|\mathbb{K}| >3 }$ we strongly use the linear representation of the affine part of ${\mathcal{U}}$ (the line at infinity being secant) as the affine part of the generalized quadrangle ${\mathsf{Q}(4,\mathbb{K})}$ (the solid at infinity being non-singular); when ${|\mathbb{K}| =3}$ , we use the connection of ${\mathcal{U}}$ with the generalized hexagon of order 2.     

Central limit theorems for hyperbolic spaces and Jacobi processes on [0,\infty [

We present a unified approach to a couple of central limit theorems for the radial behavior of radial random walks on hyperbolic spaces as well as for time-homogeneous Markov chains on $[0,\infty [$ whose transition probabilities are defined in terms of Jacobi convolutions. The proofs of all central limit theorems are based on corresponding limit results for the associated Jacobi functions $\varphi _{\lambda }^{(\alpha ,\beta )}$ . In particular, we consider the limit $\alpha \rightarrow \infty $ , the limit $\varphi _{i\rho -n\lambda }^{(\alpha ,\beta )}(t/n)$ for $n\rightarrow \infty $ , and the behavior of the Jacobi function $\varphi _{i\rho -\lambda }^{(\alpha ,\beta )}(t)$ for small $\lambda $ . The proofs of all these limit results are based on the known Laplace integral representation for Jacobi functions. Parts of the results are known, other improve known ones, and other are new.     

Existence of positive periodic solutions for second-order functional differential equations

In this paper, we show the existence of positive $T$ -periodic solutions of second-order functional differential equations $u^{\prime \prime }(t)-\rho ^2u(t)+\lambda g(t)f(u(t-\tau (t)))=0,\ \ t\in \mathbb R , $ where $\rho >0$ is a constant, $g\in C(\mathbb R ,[0,\infty ))$ , $\tau \in C(\mathbb R ,\mathbb R )$ are $T$ -periodic functions, $f\in C([0,\infty ),[0,\infty ))$ and $\lambda $ is a positive parameter. Our approach based on global bifurcation theorem.     

Tiling Convex Polygons with Congruent Equilateral Triangles

We study the sets $\mathcal{T}_{v}=\{m \in\{1,2,\ldots\}: \mbox{there is a convex polygon in }\mathbb{R}^{2}\mbox{ that has }v\mbox{ vertices and can be tiled with $m$ congruent equilateral triangles}\}$ , v=3,4,5,6. $\mathcal{T}_{3}$ , $\mathcal{T}_{4}$ , and $\mathcal{T}_{6}$ can be quoted completely. The complement $\{1,2,\ldots\} \setminus\mathcal{T}_{5}$ of $\mathcal{T}_{5}$ turns out to be a subset of Euler’s numeri idonei. As a consequence, $\{1,2,\ldots\} \setminus\mathcal{T}_{5}$ can be characterized with up to two exceptions, and a complete characterization is given under the assumption of the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis.     

Inductive topological Hausdorff dimensions and fibers of generic continuous functions

In an earlier paper Buczolich, Elekes and the author introduced a new concept of dimension for metric spaces, the so called topological Hausdorff dimension. They proved that it is precisely the right notion to describe the Hausdorff dimension of the level sets of the generic real-valued continuous function (in the sense of Baire category) defined on a compact metric space $K$ . The goal of this paper is to determine the Hausdorff dimension of the fibers of the generic continuous function from $K$ to $\mathbb {R}^n$ . In order to do so, we define the $n$ th inductive topological Hausdorff dimension, $\dim _{t^nH} K$ . Let $\dim _H K,\,\dim _t K$ and $C_n(K)$ denote the Hausdorff and topological dimension of $K$ and the Banach space of the continuous functions from $K$ to $\mathbb {R}^n$ . We show that $\sup _{y\in \mathbb {R}^n} \dim _{H}f^{-1}(y) = \dim _{t^nH} K -n$ for the generic $f \in C_n(K)$ , provided that $\dim _t K\ge n$ , otherwise every fiber is finite. In order to prove the above theorem we give some equivalent definitions for the inductive topological Hausdorff dimensions, which can be interesting in their own right. Here we use techniques coming from the theory of topological dimension. We show that the supremum is actually attained on the left hand side of the above equation. We characterize those compact metric spaces $K$ for which $\dim _{H} f^{-1}(y)=\dim _{t^nH}K-n$ for the generic $f\in C_n(K)$ and the generic $y\in f(K)$ . We also generalize a result of Kirchheim by showing that if $K$ is self-similar and $\dim _t K\ge n$ then $\dim _{H} f^{-1}(y)=\dim _{t^nH}K-n$ for the generic $f\in C_n(K)$ for every $y\in {{\mathrm{int}}}f(K)$ .     

Equivariant map superalgebras

Suppose a group $\Gamma $ acts on a scheme $X$ and a Lie superalgebra $\mathfrak {g}$ . The corresponding equivariant map superalgebra is the Lie superalgebra of equivariant regular maps from $X$ to $\mathfrak {g}$ . We classify the irreducible finite dimensional modules for these superalgebras under the assumptions that the coordinate ring of $X$ is finitely generated, $\Gamma $ is finite abelian and acts freely on the rational points of $X$ , and $\mathfrak {g}$ is a basic classical Lie superalgebra (or $\mathfrak {sl}\,(n,n)$ , $n \ge 1$ , if $\Gamma $ is trivial). We show that they are all (tensor products of) generalized evaluation modules and are parameterized by a certain set of equivariant finitely supported maps defined on $X$ . Furthermore, in the case that the even part of $\mathfrak {g}$ is semisimple, we show that all such modules are in fact (tensor products of) evaluation modules. On the other hand, if the even part of $\mathfrak {g}$ is not semisimple (more generally, if $\mathfrak {g}$ is of type I), we introduce a natural generalization of Kac modules and show that all irreducible finite dimensional modules are quotients of these. As a special case, our results give the first classification of the irreducible finite dimensional modules for twisted loop superalgebras.     

A Question from a Famous Paper of Erdős

Given a convex body $K$ K , consider the smallest number $N$ N so that there is a point $P\in \partial K$ P ∈ ? K such that every circle centred at $P$ P intersects $\partial K$ ? K in at most $N$ N points. In 1946 Erd?s conjectured that $N=2$ N = 2 for all $K$ K , but there are convex bodies for which this is not the case. As far as we know there is no known global upper bound. We show that no convex body has $N=\infty $ N = ∞ and that there are convex bodies for which $N = 6$ N = 6 .