Fundamental group and contractible closed geodesics

We prove the existence of a nonempty class of finitely presented groups with the following property: If the fundamental group of a compact Riemannian manifold M belongs to this class, then there exists a constant c(M) > 1 such that for any sufficiently large x the number of contractible closed geodesics on M of length not exceeding x is greater than c(M)^x. In order to prove this result, we give a lower bound for the number of contractible closed geodesics of length ≤ x on a compact Riemannian manifold M in terms of the resource-bounded Kolmogorov complexity of the word problem for π₁ (M), thus answering a question posed by Gromov. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Free circle actions with contractible orbits on symplectic manifolds

We prove that closed symplectic four-manifolds do not admit any smooth free circle actions with contractible orbits, without assuming that the actions preserve the symplectic forms. In higher dimensions such actions by symplectomorphisms do exist, and we give explicit examples based on the constructions of FGM.     

The contractible subgraph of 5-connected graphs

An edge e of a k-connected graph G is said to be k-removable if G — e is still k-connected. A subgraph H of a k-connected graph is said to be k-contractible if its contraction results still in a k-connected graph. A k-connected graph with neither removable edge nor contractible subgraph is said to be minor minimally k-connected. In this paper, we show that there is a contractible subgraph in a 5-connected graph which contains a vertex who is not contained in any triangles. Hence, every vertex of minor minimally 5-connected graph is contained in some triangle.     

Multiple decomposability of probabilities on contractible locally compact groups

Operator decomposable probabilities on vector spaces – generalizing (semi-)stable and self-decomposable laws – are well known. Here we are concerned with multiple decomposability on locally compact groups. In fact, as it turned out that contraction properties play an essential role, throughout we concentrate on contractible locally compact groups.     

The 3-connected graphs with a maximum matching containing precisely one contractible edge

It has previously been shown that if M is a maximum matching in a 3-connected graph G, other than K₄, then M contains at least one contractible edge of G. In this paper, we give a constructive characterization of the 3-connected graphs G having a maximum matching containing only one contractible edge of G.     

Longest cycles in 3-connected graphs contain three contractible edges

We show that if G is a 3-connected graph of order at least seven, then every longest path between distinct vertices in G contains at least two contractible edges. An immediate corollary is that longest cycles in such graphs contain at least three contractible edges.     

Covering contractible edges in 3-connected graphs. I: Covers of size three are cutsets

An edge of a 3-connected graph is said to be contractible if its contraction results in a 3-connected graph. In this paper, a covering of contractible edges is studied. We give an alternative proof to the result of Ota and Saito (Scientia (A) 2 (1988) 101–105) that the set of contractible edges in a 3-connected graph cannot be covered by two vertices, and extended this result to a three-vertex covering. We also study the existence of a contractible edge whose contraction preserves a specified cycle, and show that a non-hamiltonian 3-connected graph has a contractible edge whose contraction preserves the circumference.     

The number of contractible edges in 3-connected graphs

An edge of a 3-connected graph is calledcontractible if its contraction results in a 3-connected graph. Ando, Enomoto and Saito proved that every 3-connected graph of order at least five has |G|/2 or more contractible edges. As another lower bound, we prove that every 3-connected graph, except for six graphs, has at least (2|E(G)| + 12)/7 contractible edges. We also determine the extremal graphs. Almost all of these extremal graphsG have more than |G|/2 contractible edges.     

3-connected graphs with non-cut contractible edge covers of size k

In this paper, we show that if a 3-connected graph G other than K₄ has a vertex subset K that covers the set of contractible edges of G and if |K| 3 and |V(G)| 3|K| ? 1, then K is a cutset of G. We also give examples to show that this result is best possible. In particular, the result does not hold for K with smaller cardinality.     

On the strict contractibility of polyhedra

In this paper we study conditions under which a compact contractible polyhedron is strictly contractible to a point.     

Topological group cohomology with loop contractible coefficients

We show that for topological groups and loop contractible coefficients the cohomology groups of continuous group cochains and of group cochains that are continuous on some identity neighbourhood are isomorphic. Moreover, we show a similar statement for compactly generated groups and Lie groups holds and apply our results to different concepts of group cohomology for finite-dimensional Lie groups.     

On the compactifications of contractible affine threefolds and the Zariski Cancellation Problem

In this article, we consider the compactifications of some kinds of contractible smooth affine threefolds and the characterization of the affine 3-space GIF1³ keeping the 3-dimensional Zariski Cancellation Problem in mind. We classify the compactifications of contractible smooth affine threefolds with a certain condition concerning the numerical property of boundary divisors with respect to compactifications and, then, we show that if an affine threefold X satisfies X×GIF1¹GIF1⁴ and this numerical condition, then X is isomorphic to the affine 3-space GIF1³.Mathematics Subject Classification (2000):14R10, 14E30     

Complete controllability and contractibility in multimodal systems

The concept of a strictly positive definite set of Hermitian matrices is introduced. It is shown that a strictly positive definite set is always a positive definite set, and conditions are found under which a positive definite set is strictly positive definite. We also show that a set of Hermitian matrices is strictly positive definite if and only if some nonnegative linear combination of these matrices is a positive definite matrix. For state dimension two, we use this concept to find necessary and sufficient conditions for a two-mode completely controllable irreducible multimodal system to be contractible relative to an elliptic norm. For general state dimensions, we give necessary and sufficient conditions for a special-type two-mode completely controllable irreducible system to be contractible relative to a weakly monotone norm. Applying the above results, we show that, for state dimension two, there exists a completely controllable two-mode system which is not contractible relative to either an elliptic or a weakly monotone norm. We leave open the question whether or not complete controllability implies contractibility, relative to some norm, for multimodal systems of two or more modes.     

The orbit space of the p-subgroup complex is contractible

We show that the quotient space of the p-subgroup complex of a finite group by the action of the group is contractible. This was conjectured by Webb. Received: June 28, 1996     

A noncontractible cell-like compactum whose suspension is contractible

We prove that: (1) Every compact metrizable space is weakly homotopy equivalent to a cell-like compactum; and (2) There exists a noncontractible cell-like compactum whose suspension is contractible (this gives an affirmative answer to the Bestvina-Edwards problem).     

Fixed points of contractible valued correspondences

This note generalizes a theorem of Mas-Colell (1974) showing that a contractible valued correspondence with closed graph can be approximated by functions. The generalization is applied to two topics in the theory of fixed points, essential sets and the Lefschetz fixed point index, yielding extensions of the basic results in these areas to the case of contractible valued correspondences.This research was begun during a postdoctoral fellowship at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, where I was supported by National Science Foundation Grants MCS-8120790 and SES-8420114. Revisions were undertaken at Cornell University. This is a revised and expanded version of MSRI Working Paper 05117-86 Essential Sets of Fixed Points for Contractible Valued Correspondences. I would like to acknowledge helpful conversations with Roger Livesay and Andreu Mas-Colell. The influence of Mas-Colell's work will be evident.     

Proper actions of lattices on contractible manifolds

Every lattice Γ in a connected semi-simple Lie group G acts properly discontinuously by isometries on the contractible manifold G/K (K a maximal compact subgroup of G). We prove that if Γ acts on a contractible manifold W and if either?1) the action is properly discontinuous, or?2) W is equipped with a complete Riemannian metric, the action is by isometries and with unbounded orbits, G is simple with finite center and rank >1,?then dimW≥dimG/K. Oblatum 19-I-2001 & 24-IV-2002?Published online: 5 September 2002 RID="*" ID="*"The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation.     

Volume growth of some uniformly contractible Riemannian manifolds

It is shown that if a uniformly contractible Riemannian n-manifold (M,g) is K-quasi-isometric to an n-dimensional normed space\((V^{n},\|\cdot\|)\), (K ≥  1), then\(\liminf_{R\rightarrow \infty}\frac{{Vol}_g( {Ball}_{R})}{R^{n}\omega_{n}}\geq\frac{1}{K^{2n}}\) where ω _n is the volume of the unit Euclidean ball. In particular, if M is uniformly contractible and\(d_{GH}((M,d_g), (V^n,\|\cdot\|)) < \infty \), then M has at least Euclidean volume growth. This corollary covers an earlier result by Burago and Ivanov. Our results are motivated by a volume growth theorem contained in Gromov’s book [Gromov in Progress in Mathematics, vol. 152, Birkhäuser, Boston, 1999, p. 256], we give a detailed proof of this theorem. Using the same argument, we also derive a generalization of the theorem which is pointed out by Gromov.     

A general coincidence theorem on contractible spaces

We obtain a general coincidence theorem for multifunctions in very large classes defined on contractible spaces. Our theorem generalizes a recent result due to Tarafdar and Yuan (1994) and many other earlier works including the Fan-Browder fixed point theorem.

     

Contractibility of the Solution Sets in Strictly Quasiconcave Vector Maximization on Noncompact Domains

We study the contractibility of the efficient solution set of strictly quasiconcave vector maximization problems on (possibly) noncompact feasible domains. It is proved that the efficient solution set is contractible if at least one of the objective functions is strongly quasiconcave and any intersection of level sets of the objective functions is a compact (possibly empty) set. This theorem generalizes the main result of Benoist (Ref.1), which was established for problems on compact feasible domains.The authors thank Dr. T. D. Phuong, Dr. T. X. D. Ha, and the referees for helpful comments and suggestions.