On a conjecture of Schmutz

In this work we discuss Schmutz’s conjecture that in dimension 2 to 8 the distinct norms that occur in the lattices with the best known sphere packings are strictly greater than those in any other lattice of the same covolume. We see that the ternary conjecture is not true. However, it seems that there is but one exception: one lattice, where for one length the conjecture fails. Received: 11 February 2008, Revised: 20 May 2008     

Using as a Semantic Markup Format

One of the great problems of Mathematical Knowledge Management (MKM) systems is to obtain access to a sufficiently large corpus of mathematical knowledge to allow the management/search/navigation techniques developed by the community to display their strength. Such systems usually expect the mathematical knowledge they operate on in the form of semantically enhanced documents, but mathematicians and publishers in Mathematics have heavily invested into the format and workflow. We analyze the current practice of semi-semantic markup in documents and extend it by a markup infrastructure that allows to embed semantic annotations into documents without changing their visual appearance. This collection of macro packages is called (semantic ) as it allows to markup documents semantically without leaving the time-tried workflow, essentially turning into an MKM format. At the heart of is a definition mechanism for semantic macros for mathematical objects and a non-standard scoping construct for them, which is oriented at the semantic dependency relation rather than the document structure. We evaluate the macro collection on a large case study: the course materials of a two-semester course in Computer Science was annotated semantically and converted to the OMDoc MKM format by Bruce Miller’s LaTeXML system.      

Estimates for Littlewood-Paley Functions and Extrapolation

We prove certain L ^p -estimates for Littlewood-Paley functions arising from rough kernels. The estimates are useful for extrapolation to prove L ^p -boundedness of the Littlewood-Paley functions under a sharp kernel condition.      

On a Bernoulli-integrable magnetohydrodynamic system

A geometric procedure is used to isolate four Bernoulli integrals for a nonlinear, two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic system. The general solution of the latter may thereby be constructed.     

A p-adic analogue of a formula of Ramanujan

During his lifetime, Ramanujan provided many formulae relating binomial sums to special values of the Gamma function. Based on numerical computations, Van Hamme recently conjectured p-adic analogues to such formulae. Using a combination of ordinary and Gaussian hypergeometric series, we prove one of these conjectures. Received: 11 April 2008     

A Clifford Algebraic Framework for $$\mathfrak{sp}(m)$$-Invariant Differential Operators

We introduce a framework for studying differential operators which are invariant with respect to the real (complex) symplectic Lie algebra ( ), associated to a quaternionic structure on a vector space . To do so, these algebras are realized within the orthogonal Lie algebra . This leads in a natural way to a refinement of the recently introduced notion of complex Hermitean Clifford analysis, in which four variations of the classical Dirac operator play a dominant role. David Eelbode: Postdoctoral fellow supported by the F.W.O. Vlaanderen (Belgium).     

Plastic flow in very low temperature regime within annular micropores

The rate of deformation for glassy (amorphous) matter confined in microscopic domain at very low temperature regime was investigated using a rate-state-dependent model considering the shear thinning behavior which means, once material being subjected to high shear rates, the viscosity diminishes with increasing shear rate. The preliminary results show that there might be the enhanced rate of deformation and (shear) yield stress due to the almost vanishing viscosity in micropores subjected to some surface conditions: The relatively larger roughness (compared to the macroscopic domain) inside micropores and the slip. As the pore size decreases, the surface-to-volume ratio increases and therefore, surface roughness will greatly affect the (plastic) flow in micropores. By using the boundary perturbation method, we obtained a class of microscopic fields for the rate of deformation and yield stress at low temperature regime with the presumed small wavy roughness distributed along the walls of an annular micropore.     

Infinite Classes of Dihedral Snarks

Flower snarks and Goldberg snarks are two infinite families of cyclically 5–edge–connected cubic graphs with girth at least five and chromatic index four. For any odd integer k, k > 3, there is a Flower snark, say J _k , of order 4k and a Goldberg snark, say B _k , of order 8k. We determine the automorphism groups of J _k and B _k for every k and prove that they are isomorphic to the dihedral group D _4k of order 4k. Research performed within the activity of INdAM–GNSAGA with the financial support of the Italian Ministry MIUR, project “Strutture Geometriche, Combinatoria e loro Applicazioni”.     

Quadrature Domains with Infinite Volume

We discuss quadrature domains for subharmonic functions and prove the existence of core quadrature domains for certain positive measures. The core quadrature domains are the smallest quadrature domains as measures and inherit good properties from quadrature domains with finite volume. We next discuss new balayage for the class of harmonic functions integrable in a neighborhood of ∞. We give several estimates of balayage measures. The new balayage is introduced to construct quadrature domains for harmonic functions. Submitted: June 26, 2008. Accepted: July 24, 2008.     

The behavior of the Laplace transform of the invariant measure on the hypersphere of high dimension

We consider the sequence of the hyperspheres M _n , i.e., the homogeneous transitive spaces of the Cartan subgroup of the group and study the normalized limit of the corresponding sequence of invariant measures m _n on those spaces. In the case of compact groups and homogeneous spaces, for example, for the classical pairs (SO(n), S ^n-1), n = 1, 2, … , the limit of the corresponding measures is the classical infinite-dimensional Gaussian measure; this is the well-known Maxwell-Poincaré lemma. Simultaneously the Gaussian measure is a unique (up to a scalar) invariant measure with respect to the action of the infinite orthogonal group O(∞). This coincidence implies the asymptotic equivalence between grand and small canonical ensembles for the series of the pairs (SO(n), S ^n-1). Our main result shows that the situation for noncompact groups, for example for the case , is completely different: the limit of the measures m _n does not exist in the literal sense, and we show that only a normalized logarithmic limit of the Laplace transforms of those measures does exist. At the same time, there exists a measure which is invariant with respect to a continuous analogue of the Cartan subgroup of the group GL(∞), the so-called infinite-dimensional Lebesgue measure (see [7]). This difference is an evidence for non-equivalence between the grand and small canonical ensembles in the noncompact case. To my friend Dima Arnold     

Maximal subnear-rings of functions

For a group G, let M(G) denote the near-ring of functions on G. We characterize all maximal subnear-rings of M(G) and show that for many classes of groups, E(G), the near-ring generated by the semigroup, End(G) of G, is never maximal as a subnear-ring of M ₀ (G). Received: 25 April 2008     

Distance sets corresponding to convex bodies

Suppose that is a 0-symmetric convex body which denes the usual norm

Hardy-Littlewood system and representations of integers by an invariant polynomial

Let f be an integral homogeneous polynomial of degree d, and let be the level set for each . For a compact subset in ), set

Non-variational elliptic systems in dimension two: a priori bounds and existence of positive solutions

We establish a priori bounds for positive solutions of semilinear elliptic systems of the form

An Existence Result for a Problem with Critical Growth and Lack of Strict Convexity

We prove the existence of a nontrivial solution for a quasilinear elliptic equation involving a nonlinearity having critical growth and a convex principal part, which is not required to be strictly convex. Supported by MURST, Project “Variational Methods and Nonlinear Differential Equations”.     

Pencils on double coverings of curves

Let X be a smooth curve of genus g. When and d ≥ π−2g+1 we show the existence of a double covering where C a smooth curve of genus π with a base-point-free pencil of degree d which is not the pull-back of a pencil on X. Received: 7 February 2007; Revised: 1 July 2008     

Non-Commutative Harmonic and Subharmonic Polynomials

The paper introduces a notion of the Laplace operator of a polynomial p in noncommutative variables x = (x ₁,…, x _g ). The Laplacian Lap[p, h] of p is a polynomial in x and in a noncommuting variable h. When all variables commute we have Lap[p, h] = h ²Δ _x p where Δ _x p is the usual Laplacian. A symmetric polynomial in symmetric variables will be called harmonic if Lap[p, h] = 0 and subharmonic if the polynomial q(x, h) :=  Lap[p, h] takes positive semidefinite matrix values whenever matrices X ₁,…, X _g , H are substituted for the variables x ₁,…, x _g , h. In this paper we classify all homogeneous symmetric harmonic and subharmonic polynomials in two symmetric variables. We find there are not many of them: for example, the span of all such subharmonics of any degree higher than 4 has dimension 2 (if odd degree) and 3 (if even degree). Hopefully, the approach here will suggest ways of defining and analyzing other partial differential equations and inequalities. Dedicated to Israel Gohberg on the occasion of his 80^th birthday. All authors were partially supported by J.W. Helton’s grants from the NSF and the Ford Motor Co. and J. A. Hernandez was supported by a McNair Fellowship.     

The local part and the strong type for operators related to the Gaussian measure

In this work we present several theorems which imply the weak type 1 with respect to the Gaussian measure for the so-called local part of certain operators associated with the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck semigroup. Particular cases of these operators are the Riesz transforms of any order and the Littlewood-Paley square function. Also, we study general results based on the “size” of the operator which ensure the strong type 1 <p < ∞of both the local and global parts.     

Natural convective boundary-layer flow in a heat generating porous medium with a prescribed wall heat flux

The free convection boundary-layer flow on a vertical surface in a porous medium with local heat generation proportional to (T – T_∞)^p, where T is the local temperature and T_∞ is the ambient temperature, is considered when the surface is thermally insulated. The way in which the flow develops from the leading edge is seen to depend critically on the exponent p. For p ≤ 2 there is a boundary-layer flow for all x > 0, where x measures distance from the leading edge, with the internal heating having a significant effect at large x. For p ≥ 5 there is also a boundary-layer flow to large x but now the internal heating has an increasingly weaker effect as x increases. For 2 < p <  5 the boundary-layer solution breaks down at a finite x, with a singularity developing leading to thermal runaway at a finite distance along the surface.