The topology of parabolic character varieties of free groups

Let $G$ be a complex affine algebraic reductive group, and let $K\,\subset \, G$ be a maximal compact subgroup. Fix h $\,:=\,(h_{1}\,,\ldots \,,h_{m})\,\in \, K^{m}$ . For $n\, \ge \, 0$ , let $\mathsf X _{\mathbf{{h}},n}^{G}$ (respectively, $\mathsf X _{\mathbf{{h}},n}^{K}$ ) be the space of equivalence classes of representations of the free group on $m+n$ generators in $G$ (respectively, $K$ ) such that for each $1\le i\le m$ , the image of the $i$ -th free generator is conjugate to $h_{i}$ . These spaces are parabolic analogues of character varieties of free groups. We prove that $\mathsf X _{\mathbf{{h}},n}^{K}$ is a strong deformation retraction of $\mathsf X _{\mathbf{{h}},n}^{G}$ . In particular, $\mathsf X _{\mathbf{{h}},n}^{G}$ and $\mathsf X _{\mathbf{{h}},n}^{K}$ are homotopy equivalent. We also describe explicit examples relating $\mathsf X _{\mathbf{{h}},n}^{G}$ to relative character varieties.     

The Hopf–Lax formula in Carnot groups: a control theoretic approach

The purpose of this paper is to bring a new light on the state-dependent Hamilton–Jacobi equation and its connection with the Hopf–Lax formula in the framework of a Carnot group $(\mathbf G ,\circ ).$ The equation we shall consider is of the form $$\begin{aligned} \left\{ \begin{array}{l@{\quad }l} u_{t}+ \Psi (X_{1}u, \ldots , X_{m}u)=0\qquad &{}(x,t)\in \mathbf G \times (0,\infty ) \\ {u}(x,0)=g(x)&{}x\in \mathbf G , \end{array} \right. \end{aligned}$$ where $X_{1},\ldots , X_{m}$ are a basis of the first layer of the Lie algebra of the group $\mathbf G ,$ and $\Psi : \mathbb{R }^{m} \rightarrow \mathbb{R }$ is a superlinear, convex function. The main result shows that the unique viscosity solution of the Hamilton–Jacobi equation can be given by the Hopf–Lax formula $$\begin{aligned} u(x,t) = \inf _{y\in \mathbf G }\left\{ t \Psi ^\mathbf{G }\left( \delta _{\frac{1}{t}}(y^{-1}\circ x)\right) + g(y) \right\} , \end{aligned}$$ where $\Psi ^\mathbf{G }:\mathbf G \rightarrow \mathbb{R }$ is the $\mathbf G $ -Legendre–Fenchel transform of $\Psi ,$ defined by a control theoretical approach. We recover, as special cases, some known results like the classical Hopf–Lax formula in the Euclidean spaces $\mathbb{R }^n,$ showing that $\Psi ^{\mathbb{R }^n}$ is the Legendre–Fenchel transform $\Psi ^*$ of $\Psi ;$ moreover, we recover the result by Manfredi and Stroffolini in the Heisenberg group for particular Hamiltonian function $\Psi .$ In this paper we follow an optimal control problem approach and we obtain several properties for the value functions $u$ and $\Psi ^\mathbf G .$      

Pfaffian representations of cubic surfaces

Let $\mathbb{K }$ be a field of characteristic zero. We describe an algorithm which requires a homogeneous polynomial $F$ of degree three in $\mathbb{K }[x_{0},x_1,x_{2},x_{3}]$ and a zero ${\mathbf{a }}$ of $F$ in $\mathbb{P }^{3}_{\mathbb{K }}$ and ensures a linear Pfaffian representation of $\text{ V}(F)$ with entries in $\mathbb{K }[x_{0},x_{1},x_{2},x_{3}]$ , under mild assumptions on $F$ and ${\mathbf{a }}$ . We use this result to give an explicit construction of (and to prove the existence of) a linear Pfaffian representation of $\text{ V}(F)$ , with entries in $\mathbb{K }^{\prime }[x_{0},x_{1},x_{2},x_{3}]$ , being $\mathbb{K }^{\prime }$ an algebraic extension of $\mathbb{K }$ of degree at most six. An explicit example of such a construction is given.     

A hybrid inequality of Erdös–Turán–Koksma for digital sequences

For bases $\mathbf{b}=(b_1, \ldots , b_s)$ of $s$ not necessarily distinct integers $b_i\ge 2$ , we prove a version of the inequality of Erdös–Turán–Koksma for the hybrid function system composed of the Walsh functions in base $\mathbf{b}^{(1)}=(b_1, \ldots , b_{s_1})$ and, as second component, the $\mathbf{b}^{(2)}$ -adic functions, $\mathbf{b}^{(2)}=(b_{s_1+1}, \ldots , b_s)$ , with $s=s_1+s_2$ , $s_1$ and $s_2$ not both equal to 0. Further, we point out why this choice of a hybrid function system covers all possible cases of sequences that employ addition of digit vectors as their main construction principle.     

On nonlinear elliptic equations with Hardy potential and L^{1}-data

We consider a class of nonlinear elliptic equations involving the Hardy potential and lower order terms whose simplest model is $$\begin{aligned} -\Delta u +b(|u|)|\nabla u|^{2}+\nu |u|^{s-1}u=\lambda \frac{u}{|x|^{2}}+f \end{aligned}$$ in a bounded open $\varOmega $ of $\mathbf{R }^{N}, N\ge 3,$ containing the origin, $s>\frac{N}{N-2}, \nu $ and $\lambda $ are positive real numbers. We prove that the presence of the term $\nu |u|^{s-1}u$ has an effect on the existence of solutions when $f\in L^{1}(\varOmega )$ assuming only that $b\in L^{1}(\mathbf{R })$ without any sign condition (i.e. $b(s)s\ge 0$ ).     

The Generalization of the Decomposition of Functions by Energy Operators

This work starts with the introduction of a family of differential energy operators. Energy operators $({\varPsi}_{R}^{+}, {\varPsi}_{R}^{-})$ were defined together with a method to decompose the wave equation in a previous work. Here the energy operators are defined following the order of their derivatives $(\varPsi^{-}_{k}, \varPsi^{+}_{k}, k=\{0,\pm 1,\pm 2,\ldots\})$ . The main part of the work demonstrates for any smooth real-valued function f in the Schwartz space $(\mathbf{S}^{-}(\mathbb{R}))$ , the successive derivatives of the n-th power of f ( $n \in \mathbb{Z}$ and n≠0) can be decomposed using only $\varPsi^{+}_{k}$ (Lemma); or if f in a subset of $\mathbf{S}^{-}(\mathbb{R})$ , called $\mathbf{s}^{-}(\mathbb{R})$ , $\varPsi^{+}_{k}$ and $\varPsi^{-}_{k}$ ( $k\in \mathbb{Z}$ ) decompose in a unique way the successive derivatives of the n-th power of f (Theorem). Some properties of the Kernel and the Image of the energy operators are given along with the development. Finally, the paper ends with the application to the energy function.     

Constructible \nabla -modules on curves

Let $\mathcal{V }$ be a complete discrete valuation ring of mixed characteristic with perfect residue field. Let $X$ be a geometrically connected smooth proper curve over $\mathcal{V }$ . We introduce the notion of constructible convergent $\nabla $ -module on the analytification $X_{K}^{\mathrm{an}}$ of the generic fiber of $X$ . A constructible module is an $\mathcal{O }_{X_{K}^{\mathrm{an}}}$ -module which is not necessarily coherent, but becomes coherent on a stratification by locally closed subsets of the special fiber $X_{k}$ of $X$ . The notions of connection, of (over-) convergence and of Frobenius structure carry over to this situation. We describe a specialization functor from the category of constructible convergent $\nabla $ -modules to the category of $\mathcal{D }^\dagger _{\hat{X} \mathbf{Q }}$ -modules. We show that specialization induces an equivalence between constructible $F$ - $\nabla $ -modules and perverse holonomic $F$ - $\mathcal{D }^\dagger _{\hat{X} \mathbf{Q }}$ -modules.     

Stability results for the N-dimensional Schiffer conjecture via a perturbation method

Given a eigenvalue $\mu _{0m}^2$ of $-\Delta $ in the unit ball $B_1$ , with Neumann boundary conditions, we prove that there exists a class $\mathcal{D}$ of $C^{0,1}$ -domains, depending on $\mu _{0m} $ , such that if $u$ is a no trivial solution to the following problem $ \Delta u+\mu u=0$ in $\Omega , u=0$ on $\partial \Omega $ , and $ \int \nolimits _{\partial \Omega }\partial _{\mathbf{n}}u=0$ , with $\Omega \in \mathcal{D}$ , and $\mu =\mu _{0m}^2+o(1)$ , then $\Omega $ is a ball. Here $\mu $ is a eigenvalue of $-\Delta $ in $\Omega $ , with Neumann boundary conditions.     

The Gröbner ring conjecture in the lexicographic order case

We prove that a valuation domain $\mathbf{V}$ has Krull dimension $\le $ 1 if and only if, for any $n$ , fixing the lexicographic order as monomial order in $\mathbf{V}[X_1,\ldots ,X_n]$ , for every finitely generated ideal $I$ of $\mathbf{V}[X_1,\ldots ,X_n]$ , the ideal generated by the leading terms of the elements of $I$ is also finitely generated. This proves the Gröbner ring conjecture in the lexicographic order case. The proof we give is both simple and constructive. The same result is valid for Prüfer domains. As a “scoop”, contrary to the common idea that Gröbner bases can be computed exclusively on Noetherian ground, we prove that computing Gröbner bases over $\mathbf{R}[X_1,\ldots , X_n]$ , where $\mathbf{R}$ is a Prüfer domain, has nothing to do with Noetherianity, it is only related to the fact that the Krull dimension of $\mathbf{R}$ is $\le $ 1.     

On the rational approximation of the sum of the reciprocals of the Fermat numbers

Let $\mathcal{G}(z):=\sum_{n\geqslant0} z^{2^{n}}(1-z^{2^{n}})^{-1}$ denote the generating function of the ruler function, and $\mathcal {F}(z):=\sum_{n\geqslant} z^{2^{n}}(1+z^{2^{n}})^{-1}$ ; note that the special value $\mathcal{F}(1/2)$ is the sum of the reciprocals of the Fermat numbers $F_{n}:=2^{2^{n}}+1$ . The functions $\mathcal{F}(z)$ and $\mathcal{G}(z)$ as well as their special values have been studied by Mahler, Golomb, Schwarz, and Duverney; it is known that the numbers $\mathcal {F}(\alpha)$ and $\mathcal{G}(\alpha)$ are transcendental for all algebraic numbers α which satisfy 0<α<1. For a sequence u, denote the Hankel matrix $H_{n}^{p}(\mathbf {u}):=(u({p+i+j-2}))_{1\leqslant i,j\leqslant n}$ . Let α be a real number. The irrationality exponent μ(α) is defined as the supremum of the set of real numbers μ such that the inequality |α?p/q|<q ^?μ has infinitely many solutions (p,q)∈?×?. In this paper, we first prove that the determinants of $H_{n}^{1}(\mathbf {g})$ and $H_{n}^{1}(\mathbf{f})$ are nonzero for every n?1. We then use this result to prove that for b?2 the irrationality exponents $\mu(\mathcal{F}(1/b))$ and $\mu(\mathcal{G}(1/b))$ are equal to 2; in particular, the irrationality exponent of the sum of the reciprocals of the Fermat numbers is 2.     

Growth estimates for orbits of self-adjoint groups

Let $G$ denote a closed, connected, self-adjoint, noncompact subgroup of $GL(n,\mathbb R )$ , and let $d_{R}$ and $d_{L}$ denote respectively the right and left invariant Riemannian metrics defined by the canonical inner product on $M(n,\mathbb R ) = T_{I} GL(n,\mathbb R )$ . Let $v$ be a nonzero vector of $\mathbb R ^{n}$ such that the orbit $G(v)$ is unbounded in $\mathbb R ^{n}$ . Then the function $g \rightarrow d_{R}(g, G_{v})$ is unbounded, where $G_{v} = \{g \in G : g(v) = v \}$ , and we obtain algebraically defined upper and lower bounds $\lambda ^{+}(v)$ and $\lambda ^{-}(v)$ for the asymptotic behavior of the function $\frac{log|g(v)|}{d_{R}(g, G_{v})}$ as $d_{R}(g, G_{v}) \rightarrow \infty $ . The upper bound $\lambda ^{+}(v)$ is at most 1. The orbit $G(v)$ is closed in $\mathbb R ^{n} \Leftrightarrow \lambda ^{-}(w)$ is positive for some w $\in G(v)$ . If $G_{v}$ is compact, then $g \rightarrow |d_{R}(g,I) - d_{L}(g,I)|$ is uniformly bounded in $G$ , and the exponents $\lambda ^{+}(v)$ and $\lambda ^{-}(v)$ are sharp upper and lower asymptotic bounds for the functions $\frac{log|g(v)|}{d_{R}(g,I)}$ and $\frac{log|g(v)|}{d_{L}(g,I)}$ as $d_{R}(g,I) \rightarrow \infty $ or as $d_{L}(g,I) \rightarrow \infty $ . However, we show by example that if $G_{v}$ is noncompact, then there need not exist asymptotic upper and lower bounds for the function $\frac{log|g(v)|}{d_{L}(g, G_{v})}$ as $d_{L}(g, G_{v}) \rightarrow \infty $ . The results apply to representations of noncompact semisimple Lie groups $G$ on finite dimensional real vector spaces. We compute $\lambda ^{+}$ and $\lambda ^{-}$ for the irreducible, real representations of $SL(2,\mathbb R )$ , and we show that if the dimension of the $SL(2,\mathbb R )$ -module $V$ is odd, then $\lambda ^{+} = \lambda ^{-}$ on a nonempty open subset of $V$ . We show that the function $\lambda ^{-}$ is $K$ -invariant, where $K = O(n,\mathbb R ) \cap G$ . We do not know if $\lambda ^{-}$ is $G$ -invariant.     

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.     

Planar Beurling Transform and Bergman Type Spaces

In this paper we describe the actions of the operator $S_\mathbb{D }$ or its adjoint $S_\mathbb{D }^*$ on the poly-Bergman spaces of the unit disk $\mathbb{D }.$ Let $k$ and $j$ be positive integers. We prove that $(S_\mathbb{D })^{j}$ is an isometric isomorphism between the true poly-Bergman subspace $\mathcal{A }_{(k)}^2(\mathbb{D })\ominus N_{(k),j}$ onto the true poly-Bergman space $\mathcal{A }_{(j+k)}^2(\mathbb{D }),$ where the linear space $N_{(k),j}$ have finite dimension $j.$ The action of $(S_\mathbb{D })^{j-1}$ on the canonical Hilbert base for the Bergman subspace $\mathcal{A }^2(\mathbb{D })\ominus \mathcal{P }_{j-1},$ gives a Hilbert base $\{ \phi _{ j , k } \}_{ k }$ for $\mathcal{A }_{(j)}^2(\mathbb{D }).$ It is shown that $\{ \phi _{ j , k } \}_{ j, k }$ is a Hilbert base for $L^2(\mathbb{D },d A)$ such that whenever $j$ and $k$ remain constant we obtain a Hilbert base for the true poly-Bergman space $\mathcal{A }_{(j)}^2(\mathbb{D })$ and $\mathcal{A }_{(-k)}^2(\mathbb{D }),$ respectively. The functions $\phi _{ j , k }$ are polynomials in $z$ and $\overline{z}$ and are explicitly given in terms of the $(2,1)$ -hypergeometric polynomials. We prove explicit representations for the true poly-Bergman kernels and the Koshelev representation for the poly-Bergman kernels of $\mathbb{D }.$ The action of $S_\Pi $ on the true poly-Bergman spaces of the upper half-plane $\Pi $ allows one to introduce Hilbert bases for the true poly-Bergman spaces, and to give explicit representations of the true poly-Bergman and poly-Bergman kernels.     

Ranks of backward shift invariant subspaces of the Hardy space over the bidisk

Let $\{\varphi _n(z)\}_{n\ge 0}$ be a sequence of inner functions satisfying that $\zeta _n(z):=\varphi _n(z)/\varphi _{n+1}(z)\in H^\infty (z)$ for every $n\ge 0$ and $\{\varphi _n(z)\}_{n\ge 0}$ has no nonconstant common inner divisors. Associated with it, we have a Rudin type invariant subspace $\mathcal{M }$ of $H^2(\mathbb{D }^2)$ . The ranks of $\mathcal{M }\ominus w\mathcal{M }$ for $\mathcal{F }_z$ and $\mathcal{F }^*_z$ respectively are determined, where $\mathcal{F }_z$ is the fringe operator on $\mathcal{M }\ominus w\mathcal{M }$ . Let $\mathcal{N }= H^2(\mathbb{D }^2)\ominus \mathcal{M }$ . It is also proved that the rank of $\mathcal{M }\ominus w\mathcal{M }$ for $\mathcal{F }^*_z$ equals to the rank of $\mathcal{N }$ for $T^*_z$ and $T^*_w$ .     

On the L p -distortion of finite quotients of amenable groups

We study the L ^p -distortion of finite quotients of amenable groups. In particular, for every ${2\leq p < \infty}$ , we prove that the ? ^p -distortions of the groups ${C_2\wr C_n}$ and ${C_{2^n}\rtimes C_n}$ are in ${\Theta((\log n)^{1/p}),}$ and that the ? ^p -distortion of ${C_n^2 \rtimes_A \mathbf{Z}}$ , where A is the matrix ${{\left({\small\begin{array}{cc}2 & 1 \\ 1 & 1 \end{array}} \right)}}$ is in ${\Theta((\log \log n)^{1/p}).}$      

Passage time from four to two blocks of opinions in the voter model and walks in the quarter plane

A random walk in $\mathbf{Z}_+^2$ spatially homogeneous in the interior, absorbed at the axes, starting from an arbitrary point $(i_0,j_0)$ and with step probabilities drawn on Fig. 1 is considered. The trivariate generating function of probabilities that the random walk hits a given point $(i,j) \in \mathbf{Z}_+^2 $ at a given time $k\ge 0$ is made explicit. Probabilities of absorption at a given time $k$ and at a given axis are found, and their precise asymptotic is derived as the time $k\rightarrow \infty $ . The equivalence of two typical ways of conditioning this random walk to never reach the axes is established. The results are also applied to the analysis of the voter model with two candidates and initially, in the population $\mathbf{Z}$ , four connected blocks of same opinions. Then, a citizen changes his mind at a rate proportional to the number of his neighbors that disagree with him. Namely, the passage from four to two blocks of opinions is studied.     

True Poly-Bergman and Poly-Bergman Kernels for the Complement of a Closed Disk

Let $k$ and $j$ be positive integers. We prove that the action of the two-dimensional singular integral operators $(S_\Omega )^{j-1}$ and $(S_\Omega ^*)^{j-1}$ on a Hilbert base for the Bergman space $\mathcal{A }^2(\Omega )$ and anti-Bergman space $\mathcal{A }^2_{-1}(\Omega ),$ respectively, gives Hilbert bases $\{ \psi _{\pm j , k } \}_{ k }$ for the true poly-Bergman spaces $\mathcal{A }_{(\pm j)}^2(\Omega ),$ where $S_\Omega $ denotes the compression of the Beurling transform to the Lebesgue space $L^2(\Omega , dA).$ The functions $\psi _{\pm j,k}$ will be explicitly represented in terms of the $(2,1)$ -hypergeometric polynomials as well as by formulas of Rodrigues type. We prove explicit representations for the true poly-Bergman kernels and more transparent representations for the poly-Bergman kernels of $\Omega $ . We establish Rodrigues type formulas for the poly-Bergman kernels of $\mathbb{D }$ .