Approximation by polynomials with nonnegative coefficients and the spectral theory of positive operators

For a compact subset of symmetric with respect to conjugation and a continuous function, we obtain sharp conditions on and that insure that can be approximated uniformly on by polynomials with nonnegative coefficients. For a real Banach space, a closed but not necessarily normal cone with , and a bounded linear operator with , we use these approximation theorems to investigate when the spectral radius of belongs to its spectrum . A special case of our results is that if is a Hilbert space, is normal and the 1-dimensional Lebesgue measure of is zero, then . However, we also give an example of a normal operator (where is unitary and ) for which and .

     

An intersection number for the punctual Hilbert scheme of a surface

We compute the intersection number between two cycles and of complementary dimensions in the Hilbert scheme parameterizing subschemes of given finite length of a smooth projective surface . The -cycle corresponds to the set of finite closed subschemes the support of which has cardinality 1. The -cycle consists of the closed subschemes the support of which is one given point of the surface. Since is contained in , indirect methods are needed. The intersection number is , answering a question by H. Nakajima.

     

Weak*-closedness of subspaces of Fourier-Stieltjes algebras and weak*-continuity of the restriction map

Let be a locally compact group and the Fourier-Stieltjes algebra of . We study the problem of how weak*-closedness of some translation invariant subspaces of is related to the structure of . Moreover, we prove that for a closed subgroup of , the restriction map from to is weak*-continuous only when is open in .

     

Factorisation in nest algebras. II

The main result of this paper is Theorem 5, which provides a necessary and sufficient condition on a positive operator for the existence of an operator in the nest algebra of a nest satisfying (resp. . In Section 3 we give a new proof of a result of Power concerning outer factorisation of operators. We also show that a positive operator has the property that there exists for every nest an operator in satisfying (resp. ) if and only if is a Fredholm operator. In Section 4 we show that for a given operator in there exists an operator in satisfying if and only if the range of is equal to the range of some operator in . We also determine the algebraic structure of the set of ranges of operators in . Let be the set of positive operators for which there exists an operator in satisfying . In Section 5 we obtain information about this set. In particular we discuss the following question: Assume and are positive operators such that and belongs to . Which further conditions permit us to conclude that belongs to ?

     

Boundary slopes of punctured tori in 3-manifolds

Let be an irreducible 3-manifold with a torus boundary component , and suppose that are the boundary slopes on of essential punctured tori in , with their boundaries on . We show that the intersection number of and is at most . Moreover, apart from exactly four explicit manifolds , which contain pairs of essential punctured tori realizing and 6 respectively, we have . It follows immediately that if is atoroidal, while the manifolds obtained by - and -Dehn filling on are toroidal, then , and unless is one of the four examples mentioned above.

Let be the class of 3-manifolds such that is irreducible, atoroidal, and not a Seifert fibre space. By considering spheres, disks and annuli in addition to tori, we prove the following. Suppose that , where has a torus component , and . Let be slopes on such that . Then . The exterior of the Whitehead sister link shows that this bound is best possible.

     

Abelian subgroups of pro- Galois groups

It is proved that non-trivial normal abelian subgroups of the Galois group of the maximal Galois -extension of a field (where is an odd prime) arise from -henselian valuations with non--divisible value group, provided and contains a primitive -th root of unity. Also, a generalization to arbitrary prime-closed Galois-extensions is given.

     

Equivalence of norms on operator space tensor products of -algebras

The Haagerup norm on the tensor product of two -algebras and is shown to be Banach space equivalent to either the Banach space projective norm or the operator space projective norm if and only if either or is finite dimensional or and are infinite dimensional and subhomogeneous. The Banach space projective norm and the operator space projective norm are equivalent on if and only if or is subhomogeneous.

     

On the averages of Darboux functions

Let be the family of functions which can be written as the average of two comparable Darboux functions. In 1974 A. M. Bruckner, J. G. Ceder, and T. L. Pearson characterized the family and showed that if , then is the family of the averages of comparable Darboux functions in Baire class . They also asked whether the latter result holds true also for . The main goal of this paper is to answer this question in the negative and to characterize the family of the averages of comparable Darboux Baire one functions.

     

A weak-type inequality for differentially subordinate harmonic functions

Assuming an extra condition, we decrease the constant in the sharp inequality of Burkholder for two harmonic functions and . That is, we prove the sharp weak-type inequality under the assumptions that , and the extra assumption that . Here is the harmonic measure with respect to and the constant is the one found by Davis to be the best constant in Kolmogorov's weak-type inequality for conjugate functions.

     

Iterations of holomorphic Collet-Eckmann maps: conformal and invariant measures. Appendix: On non-renormalizable quadratic polynomials

We prove that for every rational map on the Riemann sphere , if for every -critical point whose forward trajectory does not contain any other critical point, the growth of is at least of order for an appropriate constant as , then . Here is the so-called essential, dynamical or hyperbolic dimension, is Hausdorff dimension of and is the minimal exponent for conformal measures on . If it is assumed additionally that there are no periodic parabolic points then the Minkowski dimension (other names: box dimension, limit capacity) of also coincides with . We prove ergodicity of every -conformal measure on assuming has one critical point , no parabolic, and . Finally for every -conformal measure on (satisfying an additional assumption), assuming an exponential growth of , we prove the existence of a probability absolutely continuous with respect to , -invariant measure. In the Appendix we prove also for every non-renormalizable quadratic polynomial with not in the main cardioid in the Mandelbrot set.

     

Tauberian theorems and stability of solutions of the Cauchy problem

Let be a bounded, strongly measurable function with values in a Banach space , and let be the singular set of the Laplace transform in . Suppose that is countable and uniformly for , as , for each in . It is shown that

as , for each in ; in particular, if is uniformly continuous. This result is similar to a Tauberian theorem of Arendt and Batty. It is obtained by applying a result of the authors concerning local stability of bounded semigroups to the translation semigroup on , and it implies several results concerning stability of solutions of Cauchy problems.

     

Comultiplications on free groups and wedges of circles

By means of the fundamental group functor, a co-H-space structure or a co-H-group structure on a wedge of circles is seen to be equivalent to a comultiplication or a cogroup structure on a free group . We consider individual comultiplications on and their properties such as associativity, coloop structure, existence of inverses, etc. as well as the set of all comultiplications of . For a comultiplication of we define a subset of quasi-diagonal elements which is basic to our investigation of associativity. The subset can be determined algorithmically and contains the set of diagonal elements . We show that is a basis for the largest subgroup of on which is associative and that is a free factor of . We also give necessary and sufficient conditions for a comultiplication on to be a coloop in terms of the Fox derivatives of with respect to a basis of . In addition, we consider inverses of a comultiplication, the collection of cohomomorphisms between two free groups with comultiplication and the action of the group on the set of comultiplications of . We give many examples to illustrate these notions. We conclude by translating these results from comultiplications on free groups to co-H-space structures on wedges of circles.

     

A new degree bound for vector invariants of symmetric groups

Let be a commutative ring, a finitely generated free -module and a finite group acting naturally on the graded symmetric algebra . Let denote the minimal number , such that the ring of invariants can be generated by finitely many elements of degree at most .

For and , the -fold direct sum of the natural permutation module, one knows that , provided that is invertible in . This was used by E. Noether to prove if .

In this paper we prove for arbitrary commutative rings and show equality for a prime power and or any ring with . Our results imply

for any ring with .

     

Solutions of nonlinear differential equations on a Riemannian manifold and their trace on the Martin boundary

Let be a second order elliptic differential operator on a Riemannian manifold with no zero order terms. We say that a function is -harmonic if . Every positive -harmonic function has a unique representation

where is the Martin kernel, is the Martin boundary and is a finite measure on concentrated on the minimal part of . We call the trace of on . Our objective is to investigate positive solutions of a nonlinear equation

for [the restriction is imposed because our main tool is the -superdiffusion, which is not defined for ]. We associate with every solution of (*) a pair , where is a closed subset of and is a Radon measure on . We call the trace of on . is empty if and only if is dominated by an -harmonic function. We call such solutions moderate. A moderate solution is determined uniquely by its trace. In general, many solutions can have the same trace. In an earlier paper, we investigated the case when is a second order elliptic differential operator in and is a bounded smooth domain in . We obtained necessary and sufficient conditions for a pair to be a trace, and we gave a probabilistic formula for the maximal solution with a given trace. The general theory developed in the present paper is applicable, in particular, to elliptic operators with bounded coefficients in an arbitrary bounded domain of , assuming only that the Martin boundary and the geometric boundary coincide.

     

Induction theorems on the stable rationality of the center of the ring of generic matrices

Following Procesi and Formanek, the center of the division ring of generic matrices over the complex numbers is stably equivalent to the fixed field under the action of , of the function field of the group algebra of a -lattice, denoted by . We study the question of the stable rationality of the center over the complex numbers when is a prime, in this module theoretic setting. Let be the normalizer of an -sylow subgroup of . Let be a -lattice. We show that under certain conditions on , induction-restriction from to does not affect the stable type of the corresponding field. In particular, and are stably isomorphic and the isomorphism preserves the -action. We further reduce the problem to the study of the localization of at the prime ; all other primes behave well. We also present new simple proofs for the stable rationality of over , in the cases and .

     

Baire and

Let be a locally compact Hausdorff space and let be the Banach space of all bounded complex Radon measures on . Let and be the -rings generated by the compact subsets and by the compact subsets of , respectively. The members of are called Baire sets of and those of are called -Borel sets of (since they are precisely the -bounded Borel sets of ). Identifying with the Banach space of all Borel regular complex measures on , in this note we characterize weakly compact subsets of in terms of the Baire and -Borel restrictions of the members of . These characterizations permit us to give a generalization of a theorem of Dieudonné which is stronger and more natural than that given by Grothendieck.

     

A -deformation of a trivial symmetric group action

Let be the arrangement of hyperplanes consisting of the reflecting hyperplanes for the root system . Let be the Varchenko matrix for this arrangement with all hyperplane parameters equal to . We show that is the matrix with rows and columns indexed by permutations with entry equal to where is the number of inversions of . Equivalently is the matrix for left multiplication on by

Clearly commutes with the right-regular action of on . A general theorem of Varchenko applied in this special case shows that is singular exactly when is a root of for some between and . In this paper we prove two results which partially solve the problem (originally posed by Varchenko) of describing the -module structure of the nullspace of in the case that is singular. Our first result is that

in the case that where Lie denotes the multilinear part of the free Lie algebra with generators. Our second result gives an elegant formula for the determinant of restricted to the virtual -module with characteristic the power sum symmetric function .