The distance function from the boundary in a Minkowski space

Let the space be endowed with a Minkowski structure (that is, is the gauge function of a compact convex set having the origin as an interior point, and with boundary of class ), and let be the (asymmetric) distance associated to . Given an open domain of class , let be the Minkowski distance of a point from the boundary of . We prove that a suitable extension of to (which plays the rôle of a signed Minkowski distance to ) is of class in a tubular neighborhood of , and that is of class outside the cut locus of (that is, the closure of the set of points of nondifferentiability of in ). In addition, we prove that the cut locus of has Lebesgue measure zero, and that can be decomposed, up to this set of vanishing measure, into geodesics starting from and going into along the normal direction (with respect to the Minkowski distance). We compute explicitly the Jacobian determinant of the change of variables that associates to every point outside the cut locus the pair , where denotes the (unique) projection of on , and we apply these techniques to the analysis of PDEs of Monge-Kantorovich type arising from problems in optimal transportation theory and shape optimization.

     

Asymptotic distribution of the largest off-diagonal entry of correlation matrices

Suppose that we have observations from a -dimensional population. We are interested in testing that the variates of the population are independent under the situation where goes to infinity as . A test statistic is chosen to be , where is the sample correlation coefficient between the -th coordinate and the -th coordinate of the population. Under an independent hypothesis, we prove that the asymptotic distribution of is an extreme distribution of type , by using the Chen-Stein Poisson approximation method and the moderate deviations for sample correlation coefficients. As a statistically more relevant result, a limit distribution for , where is Spearman's rank correlation coefficient between the -th coordinate and the -th coordinate of the population, is derived.

     

Singular solutions of parabolic -Laplacian with absorption

We consider, for and , the -Laplacian evolution equation with absorption

We are interested in those solutions, which we call singular solutions, that are non-negative, non-trivial, continuous in , and satisfy for all . We prove the following:

(i)

When , there does not exist any such singular solution.

(ii)

When , there exists, for every , a unique singular solution that satisfies as .

Also, as , where is a singular solution that satisfies as .

Furthermore, any singular solution is either or for some finite positive .

     

Heegner points and Mordell-Weil groups of elliptic curves over large fields

Let be an elliptic curve defined over of conductor and let be the absolute Galois group of an algebraic closure of . For an automorphism , we let be the fixed subfield of under . We prove that for every , the Mordell-Weil group of over the maximal Galois extension of contained in has infinite rank, so the rank of is infinite. Our approach uses the modularity of and a collection of algebraic points on - the so-called Heegner points - arising from the theory of complex multiplication. In particular, we show that for some integer and for a prime prime to , the rank of over all the ring class fields of a conductor of the form is unbounded, as goes to infinity.

     

The -stable pieces of the wonderful compactification

Let be a connected, simple algebraic group over an algebraically closed field. There is a partition of the wonderful compactification of into finite many -stable pieces, which was introduced by Lusztig. In this paper, we will investigate the closure of any -stable piece in . We will show that the closure is a disjoint union of some -stable pieces, which was first conjectured by Lusztig. We will also prove the existence of cellular decomposition if the closure contains finitely many -orbits.

     

Boundary blow-up in nonlinear elliptic equations of Bieberbach-Rademacher type

We establish the uniqueness of the positive solution for equations of the form in , . The special feature is to consider nonlinearities whose variation at infinity is not regular (e.g., , , , , , , or ) and functions in vanishing on . The main innovation consists of using Karamata's theory not only in the statement/proof of the main result but also to link the nonregular variation of at infinity with the blow-up rate of the solution near .

     

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 .

     

Hölder regularity of the normal distance with an application to a PDE model for growing sandpiles

Given a bounded domain in with smooth boundary, the cut locus is the closure of the set of nondifferentiability points of the distance from the boundary of . The normal distance to the cut locus, , is the map which measures the length of the line segment joining to the cut locus along the normal direction , whenever . Recent results show that this map, restricted to boundary points, is Lipschitz continuous, as long as the boundary of is of class . Our main result is the global Hölder regularity of in the case of a domain with analytic boundary. We will also show that the regularity obtained is optimal, as soon as the set of the so-called regular conjugate points is nonempty. In all the other cases, Lipschitz continuity can be extended to the whole domain . The above regularity result for is also applied to derive the Hölder continuity of the solution of a system of partial differential equations that arises in granular matter theory and optimal mass transfer.

     

Curves of genus 2 with group of automorphisms isomorphic to or

The classification of curves of genus 2 over an algebraically closed field was studied by Clebsch and Bolza using invariants of binary sextic forms, and completed by Igusa with the computation of the corresponding three-dimensional moduli variety . The locus of curves with group of automorphisms isomorphic to one of the dihedral groups or is a one-dimensional subvariety.

In this paper we classify these curves over an arbitrary perfect field of characteristic in the case and in the case. We first parameterize the -isomorphism classes of curves defined over by the -rational points of a quasi-affine one-dimensional subvariety of ; then, for every curve representing a point in that variety we compute all of its -twists, which is equivalent to the computation of the cohomology set .

The classification is always performed by explicitly describing the objects involved: the curves are given by hyperelliptic models and their groups of automorphisms represented as subgroups of . In particular, we give two generic hyperelliptic equations, depending on several parameters of , that by specialization produce all curves in every -isomorphism class.

     

Torsion freeness of symmetric powers of ideals

Let be an ideal in a Noetherian commutative ring with unit, let be an integer, and let be the canonical surjective -module homomorphism from the th symmetric power of to the th power of . When or when is a perfect Gorenstein ideal of grade , we provide a necessary and sufficient condition for to be an isomorphism in terms of upper bounds for the minimal number of generators of the localisations of . When is a maximal ideal of we show that is an isomorphism if and only if is a regular local ring. In all three cases for our results yield that if is an isomorphism, then is also an isomorphism for each .

     

Compressions of resolvents and maximal radius of regularity

Suppose that is left invertible in for all , where is an open subset of the complex plane. Then an operator-valued function is a left resolvent of in if and only if has an extension , the resolvent of which is a dilation of of a particular form. Generalized resolvents exist on every open set , with included in the regular domain of . This implies a formula for the maximal radius of regularity of in terms of the spectral radius of its generalized inverses. A solution to an open problem raised by
J. Zemánek is obtained.

     

Cohomogeneity one actions on noncompact symmetric spaces of rank one

We classify, up to orbit equivalence, all cohomogeneity one actions on the hyperbolic planes over the complex, quaternionic and Cayley numbers, and on the complex hyperbolic spaces , . For the quaternionic hyperbolic spaces , , we reduce the classification problem to a problem in quaternionic linear algebra and obtain partial results. For real hyperbolic spaces, this classification problem was essentially solved by Élie Cartan.

     

On homeomorphic Bernoulli measures on the Cantor space

Let be the Bernoulli measure on the Cantor space given as the infinite product of two-point measures with weights and . It is a long-standing open problem to characterize those and such that and are topologically equivalent (i.e., there is a homeomorphism from the Cantor space to itself sending to ). The (possibly) weaker property of and being continuously reducible to each other is equivalent to a property of and called binomial equivalence. In this paper we define an algebraic property called ``refinability' and show that, if and are refinable and binomially equivalent, then and are topologically equivalent. Next we show that refinability is equivalent to a fairly simple algebraic property. Finally, we give a class of examples of binomially equivalent and refinable numbers; in particular, the positive numbers and such that and are refinable, so the corresponding measures are topologically equivalent.

     

Quadratic maps and Bockstein closed group extensions

Let be a central extension of the form where and are elementary abelian -groups. Associated to there is a quadratic map , given by the -power map, which uniquely determines the extension. This quadratic map also determines the extension class of the extension in and an ideal in which is generated by the components of . We say that is Bockstein closed if is an ideal closed under the Bockstein operator.

We find a direct condition on the quadratic map that characterizes when the extension is Bockstein closed. Using this characterization, we show for example that quadratic maps induced from the fundamental quadratic map given by yield Bockstein closed extensions.

On the other hand, it is well known that an extension is Bockstein closed if and only if it lifts to an extension for some -lattice . In this situation, one may write for a ``binding matrix' with entries in . We find a direct way to calculate the module structure of in terms of . Using this, we study extensions where the lattice is diagonalizable/triangulable and find interesting equivalent conditions to these properties.

     

Analytic contractions, nontangential limits, and the index of invariant subspaces

Let be a Hilbert space of analytic functions on the open unit disc such that the operator of multiplication with the identity function defines a contraction operator. In terms of the reproducing kernel for we will characterize the largest set such that for each , the meromorphic function has nontangential limits a.e. on . We will see that the question of whether or not has linear Lebesgue measure 0 is related to questions concerning the invariant subspace structure of .

We further associate with a second set , which is defined in terms of the norm on . For example, has the property that for all if and only if has linear Lebesgue measure 0.

It turns out that a.e., by which we mean that has linear Lebesgue measure 0. We will study conditions that imply that a.e.. As one corollary to our results we will show that if dim and if there is a such that for all and all we have , then a.e. and the following four conditions are equivalent:

(1) for some ,

(2) for all , ,

(3) has nonzero Lebesgue measure,

(4) every nonzero invariant subspace of has index 1, i.e., satisfies dim .

     

Graded annihilators of modules over the Frobenius skew polynomial ring, and tight closure

This paper is concerned with the tight closure of an ideal in a commutative Noetherian local ring of prime characteristic . Several authors, including R. Fedder, K-i. Watanabe, K. E. Smith, N. Hara and F. Enescu, have used the natural Frobenius action on the top local cohomology module of such an to good effect in the study of tight closure, and this paper uses that device. The main part of the paper develops a theory of what are here called `special annihilator submodules' of a left module over the Frobenius skew polynomial ring associated to ; this theory is then applied in the later sections of the paper to the top local cohomology module of and used to show that, if is Cohen-Macaulay, then it must have a weak parameter test element, even if it is not excellent.

     

Geometry and ergodic theory of non-hyperbolic exponential maps

We deal with all the maps from the exponential family such that the orbit of zero escapes to infinity sufficiently fast. In particular all the parameters are included. We introduce as our main technical devices the projection of the map to the infinite cylinder and an appropriate conformal measure . We prove that , essentially the set of points in returning infinitely often to a compact region of disjoint from the orbit of , has the Hausdorff dimension , that the -dimensional Hausdorff measure of is positive and finite, and that the -dimensional packing measure is locally infinite at each point of . We also prove the existence and uniqueness of a Borel probability -invariant ergodic measure equivalent to the conformal measure . As a byproduct of the main course of our considerations, we reprove the result obtained independently by Lyubich and Rees that the -limit set (under ) of Lebesgue almost every point in , coincides with the orbit of zero under the map . Finally we show that the the function , , is continuous.

     

Strongly self-absorbing -algebras

Say that a separable, unital -algebra is strongly self-absorbing if there exists an isomorphism such that and are approximately unitarily equivalent -homomorphisms. We study this class of algebras, which includes the Cuntz algebras , , the UHF algebras of infinite type, the Jiang-Su algebra and tensor products of with UHF algebras of infinite type. Given a strongly self-absorbing -algebra we characterise when a separable -algebra absorbs tensorially (i.e., is -stable), and prove closure properties for the class of separable -stable -algebras. Finally, we compute the possible -groups and prove a number of classification results which suggest that the examples listed above are the only strongly self-absorbing -algebras.

     

Rotation topological factors of minimal -actions on the Cantor set

In this paper we study conditions under which a free minimal -action on the Cantor set is a topological extension of the action of rotations, either on the product of -tori or on a single -torus . We extend the notion of linearly recurrent systems defined for -actions on the Cantor set to -actions, and we derive in this more general setting a necessary and sufficient condition, which involves a natural combinatorial data associated with the action, allowing the existence of a rotation topological factor of one of these two types.