Pure product polynomials and the Prouhet-Tarry-Escott problem

An -factor pure product is a polynomial which can be expressed in the form for some natural numbers . We define the norm of a polynomial to be the sum of the absolute values of the coefficients. It is known that every -factor pure product has norm at least . We describe three algorithms for determining the least norm an -factor pure product can have. We report results of our computations using one of these algorithms which include the result that every -factor pure product has norm strictly greater than if is , , , or .

     

Numerical solution of the scalar double-well problem allowing microstructure

The direct numerical solution of a non-convex variational problem () typically faces the difficulty of the finite element approximation of rapid oscillations. Although the oscillatory discrete minimisers are properly related to corresponding Young measures and describe real physical phenomena, they are costly and difficult to compute. In this work, we treat the scalar double-well problem by numerical solution of the relaxed problem () leading to a (degenerate) convex minimisation problem. The problem () has a minimiser and a related stress field which is known to coincide with the stress field obtained by solving () in a generalised sense involving Young measures. If is a finite element solution, is the related discrete stress field. We prove a priori and a posteriori estimates for in and weaker weighted estimates for . The a posteriori estimate indicates an adaptive scheme for automatic mesh refinements as illustrated in numerical experiments.

     

The Diophantine equation

An effective method is derived for solving the equation of the title in positive integers and for given completely, and is carried out for all . If is of the form , then there is the solution , ; in the above range, except for with solution , , there are no other solutions.

     

Wavelet bases in

Some years ago, compactly supported divergence-free wavelets were constructed which also gave rise to a stable (biorthogonal) wavelet splitting of . These bases have successfully been used both in the analysis and numerical treatment of the Stokes and Navier-Stokes equations. In this paper, we construct stable wavelet bases for the stream function spaces . Moreover, -free vector wavelets are constructed and analysed. The relationship between and are expressed in terms of these wavelets. We obtain discrete (orthogonal) Hodge decompositions.

Our construction works independently of the space dimension, but in terms of general assumptions on the underlying wavelet systems in that are used as building blocks. We give concrete examples of such bases for tensor product and certain more general domains . As an application, we obtain wavelet multilevel preconditioners in and .

     

Computations of class numbers of real quadratic fields

In this paper an unconditional probabilistic algorithm to compute the class number of a real quadratic field is presented, which computes the class number in expected time . The algorithm is a random version of Shanks' algorithm. One of the main steps in algorithms to compute the class number is the approximation of . Previous algorithms with the above running time , obtain an approximation for by assuming an appropriate extension of the Riemann Hypothesis. Our algorithm finds an appoximation for without assuming the Riemann Hypothesis, by using a new technique that we call the `Random Summation Technique'. As a result, we are able to compute the regulator deterministically in expected time . However, our estimate of on the running time of our algorithm to compute the class number is not effective.

     

The approximation of the Maxwell eigenvalue problem using a least-squares method

In this paper we consider an approximation to the Maxwell's eigenvalue problem based on a very weak formulation of two div-curl systems with complementary boundary conditions. We formulate each of these div-curl systems as a general variational problem with different test and trial spaces, i.e., the solution space is and components in the test spaces are in subspaces of , the Sobolev space of order one on the computational domain . A finite-element least-squares approximation to these variational problems is used as a basis for the approximation. Using the structure of the continuous eigenvalue problem, a discrete approximation to the eigenvalues is set up involving only the approximation to either of the div-curl systems. We give some theorems that guarantee the convergence of the eigenvalues to those of the continuous problem without the occurrence of spurious values. Finally, some results of numerical experiments are given.

     

On Wendt's determinant

Wendt's determinant of order is the circulant determinant whose -th entry is the binomial coefficient , for . We give a formula for , when is even not divisible by 6, in terms of the discriminant of a polynomial , with rational coefficients, associated to . In particular, when where is a prime , this yields a factorization of involving a Fermat quotient, a power of and the 6-th power of an integer.

     

Double roots of power series and related matters

For a given collection of distinct arguments , multiplicities and a real interval containing zero, we are interested in determining the smallest for which there is a power series with coefficients in , and roots of order respectively. We denote this by . We describe the usual form of the extremal series (we give a sufficient condition which is also necessary when the extremal series possesses at least non-dependent coefficients strictly inside , where is 1 or 2 as is real or complex). We focus particularly on , the size of the smallest double root of a power series lying on a given ray (of interest in connection with the complex analogue of work of Boris Solomyak on the distribution of the random series ). We computed the value of for the rationals in of denominator less than fifty. The smallest value we encountered was . For the one-sided intervals and the corresponding smallest values were and .

     

A stochastic particle method for the McKean-Vlasov and the Burgers equation

In this paper we introduce and analyze a stochastic particle method for the McKean-Vlasov and the Burgers equation; the construction and error analysis are based upon the theory of the propagation of chaos for interacting particle systems. Our objective is three-fold. First, we consider a McKean-Vlasov equation in with sufficiently smooth kernels, and the PDEs giving the distribution function and the density of the measure , the solution to the McKean-Vlasov equation. The simulation of the stochastic system with particles provides a discrete measure which approximates for each time (where is a discretization step of the time interval ). An integration (resp. smoothing) of this discrete measure provides approximations of the distribution function (resp. density) of . We show that the convergence rate is for the approximation in of the cumulative distribution function at time , and of order for the approximation in of the density at time ( is the underlying probability space, is a smoothing parameter). Our second objective is to show that our particle method can be modified to solve the Burgers equation with a nonmonotonic initial condition, without modifying the convergence rate . This part extends earlier work of ours, where we have limited ourselves to monotonic initial conditions. Finally, we present numerical experiments which confirm our theoretical estimates and illustrate the numerical efficiency of the method when the viscosity coefficient is very small.

     

New estimates for Ritz vectors

The following estimate for the Rayleigh-Ritz method is proved:

Here is a bounded self-adjoint operator in a real Hilbert/euclidian space, one of its eigenpairs, a trial subspace for the Rayleigh-Ritz method, and a Ritz pair. This inequality makes it possible to analyze the fine structure of the error of the Rayleigh-Ritz method, in particular, it shows that if an eigenvector is close to the trial subspace with accuracy and a Ritz vector is an approximation to another eigenvector, with a different eigenvalue. Generalizations of the estimate to the cases of eigenspaces and invariant subspaces are suggested, and estimates of approximation of eigenspaces and invariant subspaces are proved.

     

On the asymptotic spectrum of Hermitian block Toeplitz matrices with Toeplitz blocks

We study the asymptotic behaviour of the eigenvalues of Hermitian block Toeplitz matrices , with Toeplitz blocks. Such matrices are generated by the Fourier coefficients of an integrable bivariate function , and we study their eigenvalues for large and , relating their behaviour to some properties of as a function; in particular we show that, for any fixed , the first eigenvalues of tend to , while the last tend to , so extending to the block case a well-known result due to Szegö. In the case the 's are positive-definite, we study the asymptotic spectrum of , where is a block Toeplitz preconditioner for the conjugate gradient method, applied to solve the system , obtaining strict estimates, when and are fixed, and exact limit values, when and tend to infinity, for both the condition number and the conjugate gradient convergence factor of the previous matrices. Extensions to the case of a deeper nesting level of the block structure are also discussed.

     

Constructing nonresidues in finite fields and the extended Riemann hypothesis

We present a new deterministic algorithm for the problem of constructing th power nonresidues in finite fields , where is prime and is a prime divisor of . We prove under the assumption of the Extended Riemann Hypothesis (ERH), that for fixed and , our algorithm runs in polynomial time. Unlike other deterministic algorithms for this problem, this polynomial-time bound holds even if is exponentially large. More generally, assuming the ERH, in time we can construct a set of elements that generates the multiplicative group . An extended abstract of this paper appeared in Proc. 23rd Ann. ACM Symp. on Theory of Computing, 1991.

     

Complete solutions of a family of quartic Thue and index form equations

Continuing the recent work of the second author, we prove that the diophantine equation

for has exactly 12 solutions except when , when it has 16 solutions. If denotes one of the zeros of , then for we also find all with .

     

Finding -strong pseudoprimes

Let be odd primes and . Put

Then we call the kernel, the triple the signature, and the height of , respectively. We call a -number if it is a Carmichael number with each prime factor . If is a -number and a strong pseudoprime to the bases for , we call a -spsp . Since -numbers have probability of error (the upper bound of that for the Rabin-Miller test), they often serve as the exact values or upper bounds of (the smallest strong pseudoprime to all the first prime bases). If we know the exact value of , we will have, for integers , a deterministic efficient primality testing algorithm which is easy to implement.

In this paper, we first describe an algorithm for finding -spsp(2)'s, to a given limit, with heights bounded. There are in total -spsp's with heights . We then give an overview of the 21978 - spsp(2)'s and tabulate of them, which are -spsp's to the first prime bases up to ; three numbers are spsp's to the first 11 prime bases up to 31. No -spsp's to the first prime bases with heights were found. We conjecture that there exist no -spsp's to the first prime bases with heights and so that

which was found by the author in an earlier paper. We give reasons to support the conjecture. The main idea of our method for finding those -spsp's is that we loop on candidates of signatures and kernels with heights bounded, subject those candidates of -spsp's and their prime factors to Miller's tests, and obtain the desired numbers. At last we speed our algorithm for finding larger -spsp's, say up to , with a given signature to more prime bases. Comparisons of effectiveness with Arnault's and our previous methods for finding -strong pseudoprimes to the first several prime bases are given.

     

Continuous-time Kreiss resolvent condition on infinite-dimensional spaces

Given the infinitesimal generator of a -semigroup on the Banach space which satisfies the Kreiss resolvent condition, i.e., there exists an such that for all complex with positive real part, we show that for general Banach spaces this condition does not give any information on the growth of the associated -semigroup. For Hilbert spaces the situation is less dramatic. In particular, we show that the semigroup can grow at most like . Furthermore, we show that for every there exists an infinitesimal generator satisfying the Kreiss resolvent condition, but whose semigroup grows at least like . As a consequence, we find that for with the standard Euclidian norm the estimate cannot be replaced by a lower power of or .

     

An intractability result for multiple integration

We prove that the problem of multiple integration in the Korobov class is intractable since the number of function evaluations required to achieve a worst case error less than is exponential in the dimension.

     

New expansions of numerical eigenvalues for by nonconforming elements

The paper explores new expansions of the eigenvalues for in with Dirichlet boundary conditions by the bilinear element (denoted ) and three nonconforming elements, the rotated bilinear element (denoted ), the extension of (denoted ) and Wilson's elements. The expansions indicate that and provide upper bounds of the eigenvalues, and that and Wilson's elements provide lower bounds of the eigenvalues. By extrapolation, the convergence rate can be obtained, where is the maximal boundary length of uniform rectangles. Numerical experiments are carried out to verify the theoretical analysis made.

     

On beta expansions for Pisot numbers

Given a number , the beta-transformation is defined for by (mod 1). The number is said to be a beta-number if the orbit is finite, hence eventually periodic. In this case is the root of a monic polynomial with integer coefficients called the characteristic polynomial of . If is the minimal polynomial of , then for some polynomial . It is the factor which concerns us here in case is a Pisot number. It is known that all Pisot numbers are beta-numbers, and it has often been asked whether must be cyclotomic in this case, particularly if . We answer this question in the negative by an examination of the regular Pisot numbers associated with the smallest 8 limit points of the Pisot numbers, by an exhaustive enumeration of the irregular Pisot numbers in (an infinite set), by a search up to degree in , to degree in , and to degree in . We find the smallest counterexample, the counterexample of smallest degree, examples where is nonreciprocal, and examples where is reciprocal but noncyclotomic. We produce infinite sequences of these two types which converge to from above, and infinite sequences of with nonreciprocal which converge to from below and to the th smallest limit point of the Pisot numbers from both sides. We conjecture that these are the only limit points of such numbers in . The Pisot numbers for which is cyclotomic are related to an interesting closed set of numbers introduced by Flatto, Lagarias and Poonen in connection with the zeta function of . Our examples show that the set of Pisot numbers is not a subset of .

     

A new approximation technique for div-curl systems

In this paper, we describe an approximation technique for div-curl systems based in where is a domain in . We formulate this problem as a general variational problem with different test and trial spaces. The analysis requires the verification of an appropriate inf-sup condition. This results in a very weak formulation where the solution space is and the data reside in various negative norm spaces. Subsequently, we consider finite element approximations based on this weak formulation. The main approach of this paper involves the development of ``stable pairs" of discrete test and trial spaces. With this approach, we enlarge the test space so that the discrete inf-sup condition holds and we use a negative-norm least-squares formulation to reduce to a uniquely solvable linear system. This leads to optimal order estimates for problems with minimal regularity which is important since it is possible to construct magnetostatic field problems whose solutions have low Sobolev regularity (e.g., with ). The resulting algebraic equations are symmetric, positive definite and well conditioned. A second approach using a smaller test space which adds terms to the form for stabilization will also be mentioned. Some numerical results are also presented.