Lorentzian affine hyperspheres with constant affine sectional curvature

We study affine hyperspheres with constant sectional curvature (with respect to the affine metric ). A conjecture by M. Magid and P. Ryan states that every such affine hypersphere with nonzero Pick invariant is affinely equivalent to either

or

where the dimension satisfies or . Up to now, this conjecture was proved if is positive definite or if is a -dimensional Lorentz space. In this paper, we give an affirmative answer to this conjecture for arbitrary dimensional Lorentzian affine hyperspheres.

     

The co-area formula for Sobolev mappings

We extend Federer's co-area formula to mappings belonging to the Sobolev class , , m$">, and more generally, to mappings with gradient in the Lorentz space . This is accomplished by showing that the graph of in is a Hausdorff -rectifiable set.

     

Uniform Sobolev inequalities and absolute continuity of periodic operators

We establish certain uniform inequalities for a family of second order elliptic operators of the form on the -torus, where and is a symmetric, positive definite matrix with real constant entries. Using these Sobolev type inequalities, we obtain the absolute continuity of the spectrum of the periodic Dirac operator on with singular potential. The absolute continuity of the elliptic operator div on with a positive periodic scalar function is also studied.

     

On the representation of integers as linear combinations of consecutive values of a polynomial

Let be a cyclotomic field with ring of integers and let be a polynomial whose values on belong to . If the ideal of generated by the values of on is itself, then every algebraic integer of may be written in the following form:

for some integer , where the 's are roots of unity of . Moreover, there are two effective constants and such that the least integer (for a fixed ) is less than , where

     

Irreducibility of equisingular families of curves

In 1985 Joe Harris proved the long-standing claim of Severi that equisingular families of plane nodal curves are irreducible whenever they are nonempty. For families with more complicated singularities this is no longer true. Given a divisor on a smooth projective surface it thus makes sense to look for conditions which ensure that the family of irreducible curves in the linear system with precisely singular points of types is irreducible. Considering different surfaces, including general surfaces in and products of curves, we produce a sufficient condition of the type

where is some constant and some zero-dimensional scheme associated to the singularity type. Our results carry the same asymptotics as the best known results in this direction in the plane case, even though the coefficient is worse. For most of the surfaces considered these are the only known results in that direction.

     

A general theory of almost convex functions

Let be the standard -dimensional simplex and let . Then a function with domain a convex set in a real vector space is -almost convex iff for all and the inequality

holds. A detailed study of the properties of -almost convex functions is made. If contains at least one point that is not a vertex, then an extremal -almost convex function is constructed with the properties that it vanishes on the vertices of and if is any bounded -almost convex function with on the vertices of , then for all . In the special case , the barycenter of , very explicit formulas are given for and . These are of interest, as and are extremal in various geometric and analytic inequalities and theorems.

     

On the behavior of the algebraic transfer

Let be the algebraic transfer, which is defined by W. Singer as an algebraic version of the geometrical transfer . It has been shown that the algebraic transfer is highly nontrivial and, more precisely, that is an isomorphism for . However, Singer showed that is not an epimorphism. In this paper, we prove that does not detect the nonzero element for every . As a consequence, the localized given by inverting the squaring operation is not an epimorphism. This gives a negative answer to a prediction by Minami.

     

The periodic Euler-Bernoulli equation

We continue the study of the Floquet (spectral) theory of the beam equation, namely the fourth-order eigenvalue problem

where the functions and are periodic and strictly positive. This equation models the transverse vibrations of a thin straight (periodic) beam whose physical characteristics are described by and . Here we develop a theory analogous to the theory of the Hill operator .

We first review some facts and notions from our previous works, including the concept of the pseudospectrum, or -spectrum.

Our new analysis begins with a detailed study of the zeros of the function , for any given ``quasimomentum' , where is the Floquet-Bloch variety of the beam equation (the Hill quantity corresponding to is , where is the discriminant and the period of ). We show that the multiplicity of any zero of can be one or two and (for some ) if and only if is also a zero of another entire function , independent of . Furthermore, we show that has exactly one zero in each gap of the spectrum and two zeros (counting multiplicities) in each -gap. If is a double zero of , it may happen that there is only one Floquet solution with quasimomentum ; thus, there are exceptional cases where the algebraic and geometric multiplicities do not agree.

Next we show that if is an open -gap of the pseudospectrum (i.e., ), then the Floquet matrix has a specific Jordan anomaly at and .

We then introduce a multipoint (Dirichlet-type) eigenvalue problem which is the analogue of the Dirichlet problem for the Hill equation. We denote by the eigenvalues of this multipoint problem and show that is also characterized as the set of values of for which there is a proper Floquet solution such that .

We also show (Theorem 7) that each gap of the -spectrum contains exactly one and each -gap of the pseudospectrum contains exactly two 's, counting multiplicities. Here when we say ``gap' or ``-gap' we also include the endpoints (so that when two consecutive bands or -bands touch, the in-between collapsed gap, or -gap, is a point). We believe that can be used to formulate the associated inverse spectral problem.

As an application of Theorem 7, we show that if is a collapsed (``closed') -gap, then the Floquet matrix is diagonalizable.

Some of the above results were conjectured in our previous works. However, our conjecture that if all the -gaps are closed, then the beam operator is the square of a second-order (Hill-type) operator, is still open.

     

Localization for a porous medium type equation in high dimensions

We prove the strict localization for a porous medium type equation with a source term, , , 1$">, \sigma +1$">, 0,$"> in the case of arbitrary compactly supported initial functions . We also otain an estimate of the size of the localization in terms of the support of the initial data and the blow-up time . Our results extend the well-known one dimensional result of Galaktionov and solve an open question regarding high dimensions.

     

Willmore two-spheres in the four-sphere

Genus zero Willmore surfaces immersed in the three-sphere correspond via the stereographic projection to minimal surfaces in Euclidean three-space with finite total curvature and embedded planar ends. The critical values of the Willmore functional are , where , with . When the ambient space is the four-sphere , the regular homotopy class of immersions of the two-sphere is determined by the self-intersection number ; here we shall prove that the possible critical values are , where . Moreover, if , the corresponding immersion, or its antipodal, is obtained, via the twistor Penrose fibration , from a rational curve in and, if , via stereographic projection, from a minimal surface in with finite total curvature and embedded planar ends. An immersion lies in both families when the rational curve is contained in some or (equivalently) when the minimal surface of is complex with respect to a suitable complex structure of .

     

Dimension of families of determinantal schemes

A scheme of codimension is called standard determinantal if its homogeneous saturated ideal can be generated by the maximal minors of a homogeneous matrix and is said to be good determinantal if it is standard determinantal and a generic complete intersection. Given integers and we denote by (resp. ) the locus of good (resp. standard) determinantal schemes of codimension defined by the maximal minors of a matrix where is a homogeneous polynomial of degree .

In this paper we address the following three fundamental problems: To determine (1) the dimension of (resp. ) in terms of and , (2) whether the closure of is an irreducible component of , and (3) when is generically smooth along . Concerning question (1) we give an upper bound for the dimension of (resp. ) which works for all integers and , and we conjecture that this bound is sharp. The conjecture is proved for , and for under some restriction on and . For questions (2) and (3) we have an affirmative answer for and , and for under certain numerical assumptions.

     

On the Diophantine equation : Higher-order recurrences

Let be a field of characteristic and let be a linear recurring sequence of degree in defined by the initial terms and by the difference equation

with . Finally, let be an element of . In this paper we are giving fairly general conditions depending only on on , and on under which the Diophantine equation

has only finitely many solutions . Moreover, we are giving an upper bound for the number of solutions, which depends only on . This paper is a continuation of the work of the authors on this equation in the case of second-order linear recurring sequences.

     

Non-trivial quadratic approximations to zero of a family of cubic Pisot numbers

This paper gives exact rates of quadratic approximations to an infinite class of cubic Pisot numbers. We show that for any cubic Pisot number , with minimal polynomial , such that , and where has only one real root, then there exists a , explicitly given here, such that:

(1)

For all 0$">, all but finitely many integer quadratics satisfy

where is the height function.

(2)

For all 0$"> there exists a sequence of integer quadratics such that

Furthermore, for all in this class of cubic Pisot numbers. What is surprising about this result is how precise it is, giving exact upper and lower bounds for these approximations.

     

A classification and examples of rank one chain domains

A chain order of a skew field is a subring of so that implies Such a ring has rank one if , the Jacobson radical of is its only nonzero completely prime ideal. We show that a rank one chain order of is either invariant, in which case corresponds to a real-valued valuation of or is nearly simple, in which case and are the only ideals of or is exceptional in which case contains a prime ideal that is not completely prime. We use the group of divisorial of with the subgroup of principal to characterize these cases. The exceptional case subdivides further into infinitely many cases depending on the index of in Using the covering group of and the result that the group ring is embeddable into a skew field for a skew field, examples of rank one chain orders are constructed for each possible exceptional case.

     

Non-solvability for a class of left-invariant second-order differential operators on the Heisenberg group

We study the question of local solvability for second-order, left-invariant differential operators on the Heisenberg group , of the form

where is a complex matrix. Such operators never satisfy a cone condition in the sense of Sjöstrand and Hörmander. We may assume that cannot be viewed as a differential operator on a lower-dimensional Heisenberg group. Under the mild condition that and their commutator are linearly independent, we show that is not locally solvable, even in the presence of lower-order terms, provided that . In the case we show that there are some operators of the form described above that are locally solvable. This result extends to the Heisenberg group a phenomenon first observed by Karadzhov and Müller in the case of It is interesting to notice that the analysis of the exceptional operators for the case turns out to be more elementary than in the case When the analysis of these operators seems to become quite complex, from a technical point of view, and it remains open at this time.

     

A generalization of half-plane mappings to the ball in

Let be a normalized (, ) biholomorphic mapping of the unit ball onto a convex domain that is the union of lines parallel to some unit vector . We consider the situation in which there is one infinite singularity of on . In one case with a simple change-of-variables, we classify all convex mappings of that are half-plane mappings in the first coordinate. In the more complicated case, when is not in the span of the infinite singularity, we derive a form of the mappings in dimension .

     

Large rectangular semigroups in Stone-Cech compactifications

We show that large rectangular semigroups can be found in certain Stone-Cech compactifications. In particular, there are copies of the rectangular semigroup in the smallest ideal of , and so, a semigroup consisting of idempotents can be embedded in the smallest ideal of if and only if it is a subsemigroup of the rectangular semigroup. In fact, we show that for any ordinal with cardinality at most , contains a semigroup of idempotents whose rectangular components are all copies of the rectangular semigroup and form a decreasing chain indexed by , with the minimum component contained in the smallest ideal of .

As a fortuitous corollary we obtain the fact that there are -chains of idempotents of length in . We show also that there are copies of the direct product of the rectangular semigroup with the free group on generators contained in the smallest ideal of .

     

On initial segment complexity and degrees of randomness

One approach to understanding the fine structure of initial segment complexity was introduced by Downey, Hirschfeldt and LaForte. They define to mean that . The equivalence classes under this relation are the -degrees. We prove that if is -random, then and have no upper bound in the -degrees (hence, no join). We also prove that -randomness is closed upward in the -degrees. Our main tool is another structure intended to measure the degree of randomness of real numbers: the -degrees. Unlike the -degrees, many basic properties of the -degrees are easy to prove. We show that implies , so some results can be transferred. The reverse implication is proved to fail. The same analysis is also done for , the analogue of for plain Kolmogorov complexity.

Two other interesting results are included. First, we prove that for any , a -random real computable from a --random real is automatically --random. Second, we give a plain Kolmogorov complexity characterization of -randomness. This characterization is related to our proof that implies .

     

Geometry of chain complexes and outer automorphisms under derived equivalence

The two main theorems proved here are as follows: If is a finite dimensional algebra over an algebraically closed field, the identity component of the algebraic group of outer automorphisms of is invariant under derived equivalence. This invariance is obtained as a consequence of the following generalization of a result of Voigt. Namely, given an appropriate geometrization of the family of finite -module complexes with fixed sequence of dimensions and an ``almost projective' complex , there exists a canonical vector space embedding

where is the pertinent product of general linear groups acting on , tangent spaces at are denoted by , and is identified with its image in the derived category .