Almost Cross-Intersecting and Almost Cross-Sperner Pairs of Families of Sets

For a set G and a family of sets ${\mathcal{F}}$ let ${\mathcal{D}_{\mathcal{F}}(G)=\{F\in \mathcal{F}:F\cap G=\emptyset\}}$ and ${\mathcal{S}_{\mathcal{F}}(G)=\{F\in\mathcal{F}:F\subseteq G\,{\rm or} \,G \subseteq F\}.}$ We say that a family is l-almost intersecting, (≤ l)-almost intersecting, l-almost Sperner, (≤ l)-almost Sperner if ${|\mathcal{D}_{\mathcal{F}}(F)|=l, |\mathcal{D}_{\mathcal{F}}(F)|\le l, |\mathcal{S}_{\mathcal{F}}(F)|=l, |\mathcal{S}_{\mathcal{F}}(F)| \le l}$ (respectively) for all ${F \in \mathcal{F}.}$ We consider the problem of finding the largest possible family for each of the above properties. We also address the analogous generalization of cross-intersecting and cross-Sperner families.     

Complemented modular lattices with involution and orthogonal geometry

With each orthogeometry (P, ⊥) we associate ${{\mathbb {L}}(P, \bot)}$ , a complemented modular lattice with involution (CMIL), consisting of all subspaces X and X ^⊥ such that dim X < ?₀, and we study its rôle in decompositions of (P, ⊥) as directed (resp., disjoint) union. We also establish a 1–1 correspondence between ?-varieties ${\mathcal {V}}$ of CMILs with ${\mathcal {V}}$ generated by its finite dimensional members and ‘quasivarieties’ ${\mathcal {G}}$ of orthogeometries: ${\mathcal {V}}$ consists of the CMILs representable within some geometry from ${\mathcal {G}}$ and ${\mathcal {G}}$ of the (P, ⊥) with ${{\mathbb {L}}(P, \bot) \in {\mathcal {V}}}$ . Here, ${\mathcal {V}}$ is recursively axiomatizable if and only if so is ${\mathcal {G}}$ . It follows that the equational theory of ${\mathcal {V}}$ is decidable provided that the equational theories of the ${\{{\mathbb {L}}(P, \bot)\, |\, (P, \bot) \in \mathcal {G}, {\rm{dim}} P = n\}}$ are uniformly decidable.     

On uniformly bounded spherical functions in Hilbert space

Let G be a commutative group, written additively, with a neutral element 0, and let K be a finite group. Suppose that K acts on G via group automorphisms ${G \ni a \mapsto ka \in G}$ , ${k \in K}$ . Let ${{\mathfrak{H}}}$ be a complex Hilbert space and let ${{\mathcal L}({\mathfrak{H}})}$ be the algebra of all bounded linear operators on ${{\mathfrak{H}}}$ . A mapping ${u \colon G \to {\mathcal L}({\mathfrak{H}})}$ is termed a K-spherical function if it satisfies (1) ${|K|^{-1} \sum_{k\in K} u (a+kb)=u (a) u (b)}$ for any ${a,b\in G}$ , where |K| denotes the cardinality of K, and (2) ${u (0) = {\rm id}_{\mathfrak {H}},}$ where ${{\rm id}_{\mathfrak {H}}}$ designates the identity operator on ${{\mathfrak{H}}}$ . The main result of the paper is that for each K-spherical function ${u \colon G \to {\mathcal {L}}({\mathfrak {H}})}$ such that ${\| u \|_{\infty} = \sup_{a\in G} \| u (a)\|_{{\mathcal L}({\mathfrak{H}})} < \infty,}$ there is an invertible operator S in ${{\mathcal L}({\mathfrak{H}})}$ with ${\| S \| \, \| S^{-1}\| \leq |K| \, \| u \|_{\infty}^2}$ such that the K-spherical function ${{\tilde{u}} \colon G \to {\mathcal L}({\mathfrak{H}})}$ defined by ${{\tilde{u}}(a) = S u (a) S^{-1},\,a \in G,}$ satisfies ${{\tilde{u}}(-a) = {\tilde{u}}(a)^*}$ for each ${a \in G}$ . It is shown that this last condition is equivalent to insisting that ${{\tilde{u}}(a)}$ be normal for each ${a \in G}$ .     

Exact value of the resistance exponent for four dimensional random walk trace

Let S be a simple random walk starting at the origin in ${\mathbb{Z}^{4}}$ . We consider ${{\mathcal G}=S[0,\infty)}$ to be a random subgraph of the integer lattice and assume that a resistance of unit 1 is put on each edge of the graph ${{\mathcal G}}$ . Let ${R_{{\mathcal G}}(0,S_{n})}$ be the effective resistance between the origin and S _n . We derive the exact value of the resistance exponent; more precisely, we prove that ${n^{-1}E(R_{{\mathcal G}}(0,S_{n}))\approx (\log n)^{-\frac{1}{2}}}$ . As an application, we obtain sharp heat kernel estimates for random walk on ${\mathcal G}$ at the quenched level. These results give the answer to the problem raised by Burdzy and Lawler (J Phys A Math Gen 23:L23–L28, 1990) in four dimensions.     

Computable representations for convex hulls of low-dimensional quadratic forms

Let ${\mathcal{C}}$ be the convex hull of points ${{\{{1 \choose x}{1 \choose x}^T \,|\, x\in \mathcal{F}\subset \Re^n\}}}$ . Representing or approximating ${\mathcal{C}}$ is a fundamental problem for global optimization algorithms based on convex relaxations of products of variables. We show that if n ≤ 4 and ${\mathcal{F}}$ is a simplex, then ${\mathcal{C}}$ has a computable representation in terms of matrices X that are doubly nonnegative (positive semidefinite and componentwise nonnegative). We also prove that if n = 2 and ${\mathcal{F}}$ is a box, then ${\mathcal{C}}$ has a representation that combines semidefiniteness with constraints on product terms obtained from the reformulation-linearization technique (RLT). The simplex result generalizes known representations for the convex hull of ${{\{(x_1, x_2, x_1x_2)\,|\, x\in\mathcal{F}\}}}$ when ${\mathcal{F}\subset\Re^2}$ is a triangle, while the result for box constraints generalizes the well-known fact that in this case the RLT constraints generate the convex hull of ${{\{(x_1, x_2, x_1x_2)\,|\, x\in\mathcal{F}\}}}$ . When n = 3 and ${\mathcal{F}}$ is a box, we show that a representation for ${\mathcal{C}}$ can be obtained by utilizing the simplex result for n = 4 in conjunction with a triangulation of the 3-cube.     

Irregular and Singular Loci of Commuting Varieties

Let $ {\user1{\mathcal{C}}} $ be the commuting variety of the Lie algebra $ \mathfrak{g} $ of a connected noncommutative reductive algebraic group G over an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero. Let $ {\user1{\mathcal{C}}}^{{{\text{sing}}}} $ be the singular locus of $ {\user1{\mathcal{C}}} $ and let $ {\user1{\mathcal{C}}}^{{{\text{irr}}}} $ be the locus of points whose G-stabilizers have dimension > rk G. We prove that: (a) $ {\user1{\mathcal{C}}}^{{{\text{sing}}}} $ is a nonempty subset of $ {\user1{\mathcal{C}}}^{{{\text{irr}}}} $ ; (b) $ {\text{codim}}_{{\user1{\mathcal{C}}}} \,{\user1{\mathcal{C}}}^{{{\text{irr}}}} = 5 - {\text{max}}\,l{\left( \mathfrak{a} \right)} $ where the maximum is taken over all simple ideals $ \mathfrak{a} $ of $ \mathfrak{g} $ and $ l{\left( \mathfrak{a} \right)} $ is the “lacety” of $ \mathfrak{a} $ ; and (c) if $ \mathfrak{t} $ is a Cartan subalgebra of $ \mathfrak{g} $ and $ \alpha \in \mathfrak{t}^{*} $ root of $ \mathfrak{g} $ with respect to $ \mathfrak{t} $ , then $ \overline{{G{\left( {{\text{Ker}}\,\alpha \times {\text{Ker }}\alpha } \right)}}} $ is an irreducible component of $ {\user1{\mathcal{C}}}^{{{\text{irr}}}} $ of codimension 4 in $ {\user1{\mathcal{C}}} $ . This yields the bound $ {\text{codim}}_{{\user1{\mathcal{C}}}} \,{\user1{\mathcal{C}}}^{{{\text{sing}}}} \geqslant 5 - {\text{max}}\,l{\left( \mathfrak{a} \right)} $ and, in particular, $ {\text{codim}}_{{\user1{\mathcal{C}}}} \,{\user1{\mathcal{C}}}^{{{\text{sing}}}} \geqslant 2 $ . The latter may be regarded as an evidence in favor of the known longstanding conjecture that $ {\user1{\mathcal{C}}} $ is always normal. We also prove that the algebraic variety $ {\user1{\mathcal{C}}} $ is rational.     

Alternating groups and flag-transitive triplanes

Let ${\mathcal{D}}$ be a nontrivial triplane, and G be a subgroup of the full automorphism group of ${\mathcal{D}}$ . In this paper we prove that if ${\mathcal{D}}$ is a triplane, ${G\leq Aut(\mathcal{D})}$ is flag-transitive, point-primitive and Soc(G) is an alternating group, then ${\mathcal{D}}$ is the projective space PG ₂(3, 2), and ${G\cong A_7}$ with the point stabiliser ${G_x\cong PSL_3(2)}$ .     

Atomic intersection of σ-fields and some of its consequences

Let ${(\Omega, \mathcal{F}, P)}$ be a probability space. For each ${\mathcal{G}\subset\mathcal{F}}$ , define ${\overline{\mathcal{G}}}$ as the σ-field generated by ${\mathcal{G}}$ and those sets ${F\in \mathcal{F}}$ satisfying ${P(F)\in\{0,1\}}$ . Conditions for P to be atomic on ${\cap_{i=1}^k\overline{\mathcal{A}_i}}$ , with ${\mathcal{A }_1,\ldots,\mathcal{A}_k\subset\mathcal{F}}$ sub-σ-fields, are given. Conditions for P to be 0-1-valued on ${\cap_{i=1}^k \overline{\mathcal{A}_i}}$ are given as well. These conditions are useful in various fields, including Gibbs sampling, iterated conditional expectations and the intersection property.     

Characterization of (generalized) Lie derivations on {\mathcal{J}}-subspace lattice algebras by local action

Let ${\mathcal{L}}$ be a ${\mathcal{J}}$ -subspace lattice on a Banach space X over the real or complex field ${\mathbb{F}}$ with dim X ≥ 2 and Alg ${\mathcal{L}}$ be the associated ${\mathcal{J}}$ -subspace lattice algebra. For any scalar ${\xi \in \mathbb{F}}$ , there is a characterization of any linear map L : Alg ${\mathcal{L} \rightarrow {\rm Alg} {\mathcal{L}}}$ satisfying ${L([A,B]_\xi) = [L(A),B]_\xi + [A,L(B)]_\xi}$ for any ${A, B \in{\rm Alg} {\mathcal{L}}}$ with AB = 0 (rep. ${[A,B]_ \xi = AB - \xi BA = 0}$ ) given. Based on these results, a complete characterization of (generalized) ξ-Lie derivations for all possible ξ on Alg ${\mathcal{L}}$ is obtained.     

Some results on metric n-Lie algebras

We study the structure of a metric n-Lie algebra G over the complex field C. Let G = SR be the Levi decomposition, where R is the radical of G and S is a strong semisimple subalgebra of G. Denote by m(G) the number of all minimal ideals of an indecomposable metric n-Lie algebra and R ⊥ the orthogonal complement of R. We obtain the following results. As S-modules, R ⊥ is isomorphic to the dual module of G/R. The dimension of the vector space spanned by all nondegenerate invariant symmetric bilinear forms on G is equal to that of the vector space of certain linear transformations on G; this dimension is greater than or equal to m(G) + 1. The centralizer of R in G is equal to the sum of all minimal ideals; it is the direct sum of R ⊥ and the center of G. Finally, G has no strong semisimple ideals if and only if R⊥■R.     

Forbidden configurations and Steiner designs

Let ${\mathcal{F}}$ be a (0, 1) matrix. A (0, 1) matrix ${\mathcal{M}}$ is said to have ${\mathcal{F}}$ as a configuration if there is a submatrix of ${\mathcal{M}}$ which is a row and column permutation of ${\mathcal{F}}$ . We say that a matrix ${\mathcal{M}}$ is simple if it has no repeated columns. For a given ${v \in \mathbb{N}}$ , we shall denote by forb ${(v, \mathcal{F})}$ the maximum number of columns in a simple (0, 1) matrix with v rows for which ${\mathcal{F}}$ does not occur as a configuration. We say that a matrix ${\mathcal{M}}$ is maximal for ${\mathcal{F}}$ if ${\mathcal{M}}$ has forb ${(v, \mathcal{F})}$ columns. In this paper we show that for certain natural choices of ${\mathcal{F}}$ , forb ${(v, \mathcal{F})\leq\frac{\binom{v}{t}}{t+1}}$ . In particular this gives an extremal characterization for Steiner t-designs as maximal (0, 1) matrices in terms of certain forbidden configurations.     

Nikodym Maximal Functions Associated with Variable Planes in {\mathbb{R}^{3}}

Given a vector field ${\mathfrak{a}}$ on ${\mathbb{R}^3}$ , we consider a mapping ${x\mapsto \Pi_{\mathfrak{a}}(x)}$ that assigns to each ${x\in\mathbb{R}^3}$ , a plane ${\Pi_{\mathfrak{a}}(x)}$ containing x, whose normal vector is ${\mathfrak{a}(x)}$ . Associated with this mapping, we define a maximal operator ${\mathcal{M}^{\mathfrak{a}}_N}$ on ${L^1_{loc}(\mathbb{R}^3)}$ for each ${N\gg 1}$ by $$\mathcal{M}^{\mathfrak{a}}_Nf(x)=\sup_{x\in\tau} \frac{1}{|\tau|} \int_{\tau}|f(y)|\,dy$$ where the supremum is taken over all 1/N ×? 1/N?× 1 tubes τ whose axis is embedded in the plane ${\Pi_\mathfrak{a}(x)}$ . We study the behavior of ${\mathcal{M}^{\mathfrak{a}}_N}$ according to various vector fields ${\mathfrak{a}}$ . In particular, we classify the operator norms of ${\mathcal{M}^{\mathfrak{a}}_N}$ on ${L^2(\mathbb{R}^3)}$ when ${\mathfrak{a}(x)}$ is the linear function of the form (a ₁₁ x ₁?+?a ₂₁ x ₂, a ₁₂ x ₁?+?a ₂₂ x ₂, 1). The operator norm of ${\mathcal{M}^\mathfrak{a}_N}$ on ${L^2(\mathbb{R}^3)}$ is related with the number given by $$D=(a_{12}+a_{21})^2-4a_{11}a_{22}.$$      

Conditional Reducibility of Certain Unbounded Nonnegative Hamiltonian Operator Functions

Let J and ${{\mathfrak{J}}}$ be operators on a Hilbert space ${{\mathcal{H}}}$ which are both self-adjoint and unitary and satisfy ${J{\mathfrak{J}}=-{\mathfrak{J}}J}$ . We consider an operator function ${{\mathfrak{A}}}$ on [0, 1] of the form ${{\mathfrak{A}}(t)={\mathfrak{S}}+{\mathfrak{B}}(t)}$ , ${t \in [0, 1]}$ , where ${\mathfrak{S}}$ is a closed densely defined Hamiltonian ( ${={\mathfrak{J}}}$ -skew-self-adjoint) operator on ${{\mathcal{H}}}$ with ${i {\mathbb{R}} \subset \rho ({\mathfrak{S}})}$ and ${{\mathfrak{B}}}$ is a function on [0, 1] whose values are bounded operators on ${{\mathcal{H}}}$ and which is continuous in the uniform operator topology. We assume that for each ${t \in [0,1] \,{\mathfrak{A}}(t)}$ is a closed densely defined nonnegative (=J-accretive) Hamiltonian operator with ${i {\mathbb{R}} \subset \rho({\mathfrak{A}}(t))}$ . In this paper we give sufficient conditions on ${{\mathfrak{S}}}$ under which ${{\mathfrak{A}}}$ is conditionally reducible, which means that, with respect to a natural decomposition of ${{\mathcal{H}}}$ , ${{\mathfrak{A}}}$ is diagonalizable in a 2×2 block operator matrix function such that the spectra of the two operator functions on the diagonal are contained in the right and left open half planes of the complex plane. The sufficient conditions involve bounds on the resolvent of ${{\mathfrak{S}}}$ and interpolation of Hilbert spaces.     

Existence, automatic continuity and invariant submodules of generalized derivations on modules

Let ${\mathcal{A}}$ be a ${\mathbb{C}}$ -algebra, δ be a derivation on ${\mathcal{A}}$ and ${\mathcal{M}}$ be a left ${\mathcal{A}}$ -module. A linear map ${\tau : \mathcal{M} \rightarrow \mathcal{M}}$ is called a generalized derivation relative to δ if ${\tau(am)=a\tau(m)+\delta(a)m\,(a \in \mathcal{A}, m \in \mathcal{M})}$ . In this article first we study the existence of generalized derivations. In particular we show that free modules and projective modules always have nontrivial generalized derivations relative to nonzero derivations of ${\mathcal{A}}$ . Then we investigate the invariance of prime submodules under generalized derivations. Specifically we show that every minimal prime submodule of ${\mathcal{M}}$ is invariant under every generalized derivation. Moreover we obtain analogs of Posner’s theorem for generalized derivations. In the case that ${\mathcal{A}}$ is a Banach algebra and ${\mathcal{M}}$ is a Banach left ${\mathcal{A}}$ -module, we study the existence of continuous generalized derivations and automatic continuity of generalized derivations.     

Generalized Complex Spherical Harmonics, Frame Functions, and Gleason Theorem

Consider a finite dimensional complex Hilbert space ${\mathcal{H}}$ , with ${dim(\mathcal{H}) \geq 3}$ , define ${\mathbb{S}(\mathcal{H}):= \{x\in \mathcal{H} \:|\: \|x\|=1\}}$ , and let ${\nu_\mathcal{H}}$ be the unique regular Borel positive measure invariant under the action of the unitary operators in ${\mathcal{H}}$ , with ${\nu_\mathcal{H}(\mathbb{S}(\mathcal{H}))=1}$ . We prove that if a complex frame function ${f : \mathbb{S}(\mathcal{H})\to \mathbb{C}}$ satisfies ${f \in \mathbb{L}^2(\mathbb{S}(\mathcal{H}), \nu_\mathcal{H})}$ , then it verifies Gleason’s statement: there is a unique linear operator ${A: \mathcal{H} \to \mathcal{H}}$ such that ${f(u) = \langle u| A u\rangle}$ for every ${u \in \mathbb{S}(\mathcal{H}).\,A}$ is Hermitean when f is real. No boundedness requirement is thus assumed on f a priori.     

Lower bounds on Ricci curvature and quantitative behavior of singular sets

Let Y ⁿ denote the Gromov-Hausdorff limit $M^{n}_{i}\stackrel{d_{\mathrm{GH}}}{\longrightarrow} Y^{n}$ of v-noncollapsed Riemannian manifolds with ${\mathrm{Ric}}_{M^{n}_{i}}\geq-(n-1)$ . The singular set $\mathcal {S}\subset Y$ has a stratification $\mathcal {S}^{0}\subset \mathcal {S}^{1}\subset\cdots\subset \mathcal {S}$ , where $y\in \mathcal {S}^{k}$ if no tangent cone at y splits off a factor ? ^k+1 isometrically. Here, we define for all η>0, 0<r≤1, the k-th effective singular stratum $\mathcal {S}^{k}_{\eta,r}$ satisfying $\bigcup_{\eta}\bigcap_{r} \,\mathcal {S}^{k}_{\eta,r}= \mathcal {S}^{k}$ . Sharpening the known Hausdorff dimension bound $\dim\, \mathcal {S}^{k}\leq k$ , we prove that for all y, the volume of the r-tubular neighborhood of $\mathcal {S}^{k}_{\eta,r}$ satisfies ${\mathrm {Vol}}(T_{r}(\mathcal {S}^{k}_{\eta,r})\cap B_{\frac{1}{2}}(y))\leq c(n,{\mathrm {v}},\eta)r^{n-k-\eta}$ . The proof involves a quantitative differentiation argument. This result has applications to Einstein manifolds. Let $\mathcal {B}_{r}$ denote the set of points at which the C ²-harmonic radius is ≤r. If also the $M^{n}_{i}$ are Kähler-Einstein with L ₂ curvature bound, $\| Rm\|_{L_{2}}\leq C$ , then ${\mathrm {Vol}}( \mathcal {B}_{r}\cap B_{\frac{1}{2}}(y))\leq c(n,{\mathrm {v}},C)r^{4}$ for all y. In the Kähler-Einstein case, without assuming any integral curvature bound on the $M^{n}_{i}$ , we obtain a slightly weaker volume bound on $\mathcal {B}_{r}$ which yields an a priori L _p curvature bound for all p<2. The methodology developed in this paper is new and is applicable in many other contexts. These include harmonic maps, minimal hypersurfaces, mean curvature flow and critical sets of solutions to elliptic equations.     

On additive decompositions of the set of primitive roots modulo p

It is conjectured that the set ${\mathcal {G}}$ of the primitive roots modulo p has no decomposition (modulo p) of the form ${\mathcal {G}= \mathcal {A} +\mathcal {B}}$ with ${|\mathcal {A}|\ge 2}$ , ${|\mathcal {B} |\ge 2}$ . This conjecture seems to be beyond reach but it is shown that if such a decomposition of ${\mathcal {G}}$ exists at all, then ${|\mathcal {A} |}$ , ${|\mathcal {B} |}$ must be around p ^1/2, and then this result is applied to show that ${\mathcal {G}}$ has no decomposition of the form ${\mathcal {G} =\mathcal {A} + \mathcal {B} + \mathcal {C}}$ with ${|\mathcal {A} |\ge 2}$ , ${|\mathcal {B} |\ge 2}$ , ${|\mathcal {C} |\ge 2}$ .     

On the unique representation of very strong algebraic geometry codes

This paper addresses the question of retrieving the triple ${(\mathcal X,\mathcal P, E)}$ from the algebraic geometry code ${\mathcal C = \mathcal C_L(\mathcal X, \mathcal P, E)}$ , where ${\mathcal X}$ is an algebraic curve over the finite field ${\mathbb F_q, \,\mathcal P}$ is an n-tuple of ${\mathbb F_q}$ -rational points on ${\mathcal X}$ and E is a divisor on ${\mathcal X}$ . If ${\deg(E)\geq 2g+1}$ where g is the genus of ${\mathcal X}$ , then there is an embedding of ${\mathcal X}$ onto ${\mathcal Y}$ in the projective space of the linear series of the divisor E. Moreover, if ${\deg(E)\geq 2g+2}$ , then ${I(\mathcal Y)}$ , the vanishing ideal of ${\mathcal Y}$ , is generated by ${I_2(\mathcal Y)}$ , the homogeneous elements of degree two in ${I(\mathcal Y)}$ . If ${n >2 \deg(E)}$ , then ${I_2(\mathcal Y)=I_2(\mathcal Q)}$ , where ${\mathcal Q}$ is the image of ${\mathcal P}$ under the map from ${\mathcal X}$ to ${\mathcal Y}$ . These three results imply that, if ${2g+2\leq m < \frac{1}{2}n}$ , an AG representation ${(\mathcal Y, \mathcal Q, F)}$ of the code ${\mathcal C}$ can be obtained just using a generator matrix of ${\mathcal C}$ where ${\mathcal Y}$ is a normal curve in ${\mathbb{P}^{m-g}}$ which is the intersection of quadrics. This fact gives us some clues for breaking McEliece cryptosystem based on AG codes provided that we have an efficient procedure for computing and decoding the representation obtained.     

Donsker-type theorems for nonparametric maximum likelihood estimators

Let ${\mathcal{P}}$ be a nonparametric probability model consisting of smooth probability densities and let ${\hat{p}_{n}}$ be the corresponding maximum likelihood estimator based on n independent observations each distributed according to the law ${\mathbb{P}}$ . With $\hat{\mathbb{P}}_{n}$ denoting the measure induced by the density ${\hat{p}_{n}}$ , define the stochastic process ${\hat{\nu}}_{n}: f\longmapsto \sqrt{n} \int fd({\hat{\mathbb{P}}}_{n} -\mathbb{P})$ where f ranges over some function class ${\mathcal{F}}$ . We give a general condition for Donsker classes ${\mathcal{F}}$ implying that the stochastic process $\hat{\nu}_{n}$ is asymptotically equivalent to the empirical process in the space ${\ell ^{\infty }(\mathcal{F})}$ of bounded functions on ${ \mathcal{F}}$ . This implies in particular that $\hat{\nu}_{n}$ converges in law in ${\ell ^{\infty }(\mathcal{F})}$ to a mean zero Gaussian process. We verify the general condition for a large family of Donsker classes ${\mathcal{ F}}$ . We give a number of applications: convergence of the probability measure ${\hat{\mathbb{P}}_{n}}$ to ${\mathbb{P}}$ at rate ${\sqrt{n}}$ in certain metrics metrizing the topology of weak(-star) convergence; a unified treatment of convergence rates of the MLE in a continuous scale of Sobolev-norms; ${\sqrt{n}}$ -efficient estimation of nonlinear functionals defined on ${\mathcal{P}}$ ; limit theorems at rate ${\sqrt{n}}$ for the maximum likelihood estimator of the convolution product ${\mathbb{P\ast P}}$ .