Iterative reweighted methods for $$\ell _1-\ell _p$$ minimization

In this paper, we focus on the \(\ell _1-\ell _p\) minimization problem with \(0<p<1\), which is challenging due to the \(\ell _p\) norm being non-Lipschizian. In theory, we derive computable lower bounds for nonzero entries of the generalized first-order stationary points of \(\ell _1-\ell _p\) minimization, and hence of its local minimizers. In algorithms, based on three locally Lipschitz continuous \(\epsilon \)-approximation to \(\ell _p\) norm, we design several iterative reweighted \(\ell _1\) and \(\ell _2\) methods to solve those approximation problems. Furthermore, we show that any accumulation point of the sequence generated by these methods is a generalized first-order stationary point of \(\ell _1-\ell _p\) minimization. This result, in particular, applies to the iterative reweighted \(\ell _1\) methods based on the new Lipschitz continuous \(\epsilon \)-approximation introduced by Lu (Math Program 147(1–2):277–307, 2014), provided that the approximation parameter \(\epsilon \) is below a threshold value. Numerical results are also reported to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed methods.     

Computing the Permanent of (Some) Complex Matrices

We present a deterministic algorithm, which, for any given \(0< \epsilon < 1\) and an \(n \times n\) real or complex matrix \(A=\left( a_{ij}\right) \) such that \(\left| a_{ij}-1 \right| \le 0.19\) for all \(i, j\) computes the permanent of \(A\) within relative error \(\epsilon \) in \(n^{O\left( \ln n -\ln \epsilon \right) }\) time. The method can be extended to computing hafnians and multidimensional permanents.     

On Ambrosetti–Malchiodi–Ni conjecture on two-dimensional smooth bounded domains

We consider the problem

$$\begin{aligned} \epsilon ^2 \Delta u-V(y)u+u^p\,=\,0,\quad u>0\quad \text{ in }\quad \Omega , \quad \frac{\partial u}{\partial \nu }\,=\,0\quad \text{ on }\quad \partial \Omega , \end{aligned}$$

where \(\Omega \) is a bounded domain in \({\mathbb {R}}^2\) with smooth boundary, the exponent p is greater than 1, \(\epsilon >0\) is a small parameter, V is a uniformly positive, smooth potential on \(\bar{\Omega }\), and \(\nu \) denotes the outward unit normal of \(\partial \Omega \). Let \(\Gamma \) be a curve intersecting orthogonally \(\partial \Omega \) at exactly two points and dividing \(\Omega \) into two parts. Moreover, \(\Gamma \) satisfies stationary and non-degeneracy conditions with respect to the functional \(\int _{\Gamma }V^{\sigma }\), where \(\sigma =\frac{p+1}{p-1}-\frac{1}{2}\). We prove the existence of a solution \(u_\epsilon \) concentrating along the whole of \(\Gamma \), exponentially small in \(\epsilon \) at any fixed distance from it, provided that \(\epsilon \) is small and away from certain critical numbers. In particular, this establishes the validity of the two dimensional case of a conjecture by Ambrosetti et al. (Indiana Univ Math J 53(2), 297–329, 2004).

     

Rigidity of Free Boundary Surfaces in Compact 3-Manifolds with Strictly Convex Boundary

In this paper, we obtain an analogue of Toponogov theorem in dimension 3 for compact manifolds \(M^3\) with nonnegative Ricci curvature and strictly convex boundary \(\partial M\). Here we obtain a sharp upper bound for the length \(L(\partial \Sigma )\) of the boundary \(\partial \Sigma \) of a free boundary minimal surface \(\Sigma ^2\) in \(M^3\) in terms of the genus of \(\Sigma \) and the number of connected components of \(\partial \Sigma \), assuming \(\Sigma \) has index one. After, under a natural hypothesis on the geometry of M along \(\partial M\), we prove that if \(L(\partial \Sigma )\) saturates the respective upper bound, then \(M^3\) is isometric to the Euclidean 3-ball and \(\Sigma ^2\) is isometric to the Euclidean disk. In particular, we get a sharp upper bound for the area of \(\Sigma \), when \(M^3\) is a strictly convex body in \(\mathbb {R}^3\), which is saturated only on the Euclidean 3-balls (by the Euclidean disks). We also consider similar results for free boundary stable CMC surfaces.     

From a Microscopic to a Macroscopic Model for Alzheimer Disease: Two-Scale Homogenization of the Smoluchowski Equation in Perforated Domains

In this paper, we study the homogenization of a set of Smoluchowski’s discrete diffusion–coagulation equations modeling the aggregation and diffusion of \(\beta \)-amyloid peptide (A\(\beta \)), a process associated with the development of Alzheimer’s disease. In particular, we define a periodically perforated domain \(\Omega _{\epsilon }\), obtained by removing from the fixed domain \(\Omega \) (the cerebral tissue) infinitely many small holes of size \(\epsilon \) (the neurons), which support a non-homogeneous Neumann boundary condition describing the production of A\(\beta \) by the neuron membranes. Then, we prove that, when \(\epsilon \rightarrow 0\), the solution of this micromodel two-scale converges to the solution of a macromodel asymptotically consistent with the original one. Indeed, the information given on the microscale by the non-homogeneous Neumann boundary condition is transferred into a source term appearing in the limiting (homogenized) equations. Furthermore, on the macroscale, the geometric structure of the perforated domain induces a correction in that the scalar diffusion coefficients defined at the microscale are replaced by tensorial quantities.     

Improved Upper Bounds on the Domination Number of Graphs With Minimum Degree at Least Five

An algorithmic upper bound on the domination number \(\gamma \) of graphs in terms of the order n and the minimum degree \(\delta \) is proved. It is demonstrated that the bound improves best previous bounds for any \(5\le \delta \le 50\). In particular, for \(\delta =5\), Xing et al. (Graphs Comb. 22:127–143, 2006) proved that \(\gamma \le 5n/14 < 0.3572 n\). This bound is improved to 0.3440 n. For \(\delta =6\), Clark et al. (Congr. Numer. 132:99–123, 1998) established \(\gamma <0.3377 n\), while Biró et al. (Bull. Inst. Comb. Appl. 64:73–83, 2012) recently improved it to \(\gamma <0.3340 n\). Here the bound is further improved to \(\gamma < 0.3159n\). For \(\delta =7\), the best earlier bound 0.3088n is improved to \(\gamma < 0.2927n\).     

A Heroin Epidemic Model: Very General Non Linear Incidence,Treat-Age,and Global Stability

The aim of this work is to establish the existence of multi-peak solutions for the following class of quasilinear problems

$$ - \mbox{div} \bigl(\epsilon^{2}\phi\bigl(\epsilon|\nabla u|\bigr)\nabla u \bigr) + V(x)\phi\bigl(\vert u\vert\bigr)u = f(u)\quad\mbox{in } \mathbb{R}^{N}, $$

where \(\epsilon\) is a positive parameter, \(N\geq2\), \(V\), \(f\) are continuous functions satisfying some technical conditions and \(\phi\) is a \(C^{1}\)-function.

     

Toric Aspects of the First Eigenvalue

In this paper we study the smallest non-zero eigenvalue \(\lambda _1\) of the Laplacian on toric Kähler manifolds. We find an explicit upper bound for \(\lambda _1\) in terms of moment polytope data. We show that this bound can only be attained for \(\mathbb C\mathbb P^n\) endowed with the Fubini–Study metric and therefore \(\mathbb C\mathbb P^n\) endowed with the Fubini–Study metric is spectrally determined among all toric Kähler metrics. We also study the equivariant counterpart of \(\lambda _1\) which we denote by \(\lambda _1^T\). It is the smallest non-zero eigenvalue of the Laplacian restricted to torus-invariant functions. We prove that \(\lambda _1^T\) is not bounded among toric Kähler metrics thus generalizing a result of Abreu–Freitas on \(S^2\). In particular, \(\lambda _1^T\) and \(\lambda _1\) do not coincide in general.     

Compact $$\lambda $$-translating Solitons with Boundary

A \(\lambda \)-translating soliton with density vector \(\mathbf {v}\) is a surface \(\varSigma \) in Euclidean space \(\mathbb {R}^3\) whose mean curvature H satisfies \(2H=2\lambda +\langle N,\mathbf {v}\rangle \), where N is the Gauss map of \(\varSigma \). In this article, we study the shape of a compact \(\lambda \)-translating soliton in terms of its boundary. If \(\varGamma \) is a given closed curve, we deduce under what conditions on \(\lambda \) there exists a compact \(\lambda \)-translating soliton \(\varSigma \) with boundary \(\varGamma \) and we provide estimates of the surface area depending on the height of \(\varSigma \). Finally, we study the shape of \(\varSigma \) related with the geometry of \(\varGamma \), in particular, we give conditions that assert that \(\varSigma \) inherits the symmetries of its boundary \(\varGamma \).     

Euclidean Distance Between Haar Orthogonal and Gaussian Matrices

In this work, we study a version of the general question of how well a Haar-distributed orthogonal matrix can be approximated by a random Gaussian matrix. Here, we consider a Gaussian random matrix \(Y_n\) of order n and apply to it the Gram–Schmidt orthonormalization procedure by columns to obtain a Haar-distributed orthogonal matrix \(U_n\). If \(F_i^m\) denotes the vector formed by the first m-coordinates of the ith row of \(Y_n-\sqrt{n}U_n\) and \(\alpha \,=\,\frac{m}{n}\), our main result shows that the Euclidean norm of \(F_i^m\) converges exponentially fast to \(\sqrt{ \big (2-\frac{4}{3} \frac{(1-(1 -\alpha )^{3/2})}{\alpha }\big )m}\), up to negligible terms. To show the extent of this result, we use it to study the convergence of the supremum norm \(\epsilon _n(m)\,=\,\sup _{1\le i \le n, 1\le j \le m} |y_{i,j}- \sqrt{n}u_{i,j}|\) and we find a coupling that improves by a factor \(\sqrt{2}\) the recently proved best known upper bound on \(\epsilon _n(m)\). Our main result also has applications in Quantum Information Theory.     

Pairs of Semisimple Lie Algebras and their Maximal Reductive Subalgebras

Let \(\mathfrak g\) be a semisimple Lie algebra over a field \(\mathbb K\), \(\text{char}\left( \mathbb{K} \right)=0\), and \(\mathfrak g_1\) a subalgebra reductive in \(\mathfrak g\). Suppose that the restriction of the Killing form B of \(\mathfrak g\) to \(\mathfrak g_1 \times \mathfrak g_1\) is nondegenerate. Consider the following statements: ( 1) For any Cartan subalgebra \(\mathfrak h_1\) of \(\mathfrak g_1\) there is a unique Cartan subalgebra \(\mathfrak h\) of \(\mathfrak g\) containing \(\mathfrak h_1\); ( 2) \(\mathfrak g_1\) is self-normalizing in \(\mathfrak g\); ( 3) The B-orthogonal \(\mathfrak p\) of \(\mathfrak g_1\) in \(\mathfrak g\) is simple as a \(\mathfrak g_1\)-module for the adjoint representation. We give some answers to this natural question: For which pairs \((\mathfrak g,\mathfrak g_1)\) do ( 1), ( 2) or ( 3) hold? We also study how \(\mathfrak p\) in general decomposes as a \(\mathfrak g_1\)-module, and when \(\mathfrak g_1\) is a maximal subalgebra of \(\mathfrak g\). In particular suppose \((\mathfrak g,\sigma )\) is a pair with \(\mathfrak g\) as above and σ its automorphism of order m. Assume that \(\mathbb K\) contains a primitive m-th root of unity. Define \(\mathfrak g_1:=\mathfrak g^{\sigma}\), the fixed point algebra for σ. We prove the following generalization of a well known result for symmetric Lie algebras, i.e., for m=2: (a) \((\mathfrak g,\mathfrak g_1)\) satisfies ( 1); (b) For m prime, \((\mathfrak g,\mathfrak g_1)\) satisfies ( 2).     

Short-Time Nonlinear Effects in the Exciton-Polariton System

In the exciton-polariton system, a linear dispersive photon field is coupled to a nonlinear exciton field. Short-time analysis of the lossless system shows that, when the photon field is excited, the time required for that field to exhibit nonlinear effects is longer than the time required for the nonlinear Schrödinger equation, in which the photon field itself is nonlinear. When the initial condition is scaled by \(\epsilon ^\alpha \), it is found that the relative error committed by omitting the nonlinear term in the exciton-polariton system remains within \(\epsilon \) for all times up to \(t=C\epsilon ^\beta \), where \(\beta =(1-\alpha (p-1))/(p+2)\). This is in contrast to \(\beta =1-\alpha (p-1)\) for the nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The result is proved for solutions in \(H^s(\mathbb {R}^n)\) for \(s>n/2\). Numerical computations indicate that the results are sharp and also hold in \(L^2(\mathbb {R}^n)\).     

Dirichlet and Neumann eigenvalue problems on CR manifolds

We study the properties of Carnot–Carathéodory spaces attached to a strictly pseudoconvex CR manifold M, in a neighborhood of each point \(x \in M\), versus the pseudohermitian geometry of M arising from a fixed positively oriented contact form \(\theta \) on M. The weak Dirichlet problem for the sublaplacian \(\Delta _b\) on \((M, \theta )\) is solved on domains \(\Omega \subset M\) supporting the Poincaré inequality. The solution to Neumann problem for the sublaplacian \(\Delta _b\) on a \(C^{1,1}\) connected \((\epsilon , \delta )\)-domain \(\Omega \subset {{\mathbb {G}}}\) in a Carnot group (due to Danielli et al. in: Memoirs of American Mathematical Society 2006) is revisited for domains in a CR manifold. As an application we prove discreetness of the Dirichlet and Neumann spectra of \(\Delta _b\) on \(\Omega \subset M\) in a Carnot–Carthéodory complete pseudohermitian manifold \((M, \theta )\).     

A characterization of cut locus for $$C^1$$ hypersurfaces

Let \(\Omega \) be an open set in \(\mathbb {R}^n\) with \(C^1\)-boundary and \(\Sigma \) be the skeleton of \(\Omega \), which consists of points where the distance function to \(\partial \Omega \) is not differentiable. This paper characterizes the cut locus (ridge) \(\overline{\Sigma }\), which is the closure of the skeleton, by introducing a generalized radius of curvature and its lower semicontinuous envelope. As an application we give a sufficient condition for vanishing of the Lebesgue measure of \(\overline{\Sigma }\).     

Bounds for the Steklov eigenvalues

Let \(\Omega \) be a star-shaped bounded domain in \((\mathbb {S}^{n}, ds^{2})\) with smooth boundary. In this article, we give a sharp lower bound for the first non-zero eigenvalue of the Steklov eigenvalue problem in \(\Omega .\) This result extends a result given by Kuttler and Sigillito (SIAM Rev 10:368–370, 1968) for a star-shaped bounded domain in \(\mathbb {R}^2\). Further we also obtain a two sided bound for the eigenvalues of the Steklov problem on a ball in \(\mathbb {R}^n\) with rotationally invariant metric and with bounded radial curvature.     

Asymptotic diophantine approximation: the multiplicative case

Let \(\alpha \) and \(\beta \) be irrational real numbers and \(0<\varepsilon <1/30\). We prove a precise estimate for the number of positive integers \(q\le Q\) that satisfy \(\Vert q\alpha \Vert \cdot \Vert q\beta \Vert <\varepsilon \). If we choose \(\varepsilon \) as a function of Q, we get asymptotics as Q gets large, provided \(\varepsilon Q\) grows quickly enough in terms of the (multiplicative) Diophantine type of \((\alpha ,\beta )\), e.g., if \((\alpha ,\beta )\) is a counterexample to Littlewood’s conjecture, then we only need that \(\varepsilon Q\) tends to infinity. Our result yields a new upper bound on sums of reciprocals of products of fractional parts and sheds some light on a recent question of Lê and Vaaler.     

Diagonals of injective tensor products of Banach lattices with bases

Let E be a Banach lattice with a 1-unconditional basis \(\{e_i: i \in \mathbb {N}\}\). Denote by \(\Delta (\check{\otimes }_{n,\epsilon }E)\) (resp. \(\Delta (\check{\otimes }_{n,s,\epsilon }E)\)) the main diagonal space of the n-fold full (resp. symmetric) injective Banach space tensor product, and denote by \(\Delta (\check{\otimes }_{n,|\epsilon |}E)\) (resp. \(\Delta (\check{\otimes }_{n,s,|\epsilon |}E)\)) the main diagonal space of the n-fold full (resp. symmetric) injective Banach lattice tensor product. We show that these four main diagonal spaces are pairwise isometrically isomorphic. We also show that the tensor diagonal \(\{e_i\otimes \cdots \otimes e_i: i \in \mathbb {N}\}\) is a 1-unconditional basic sequence in both \(\check{\otimes }_{n,\epsilon }E\) and \(\check{\otimes }_{n,s,\epsilon }E\).     

Closure properties of parametric subcompleteness

For an ordinal \(\varepsilon \), I introduce a variant of the notion of subcompleteness of a forcing poset, which I call \(\varepsilon \)-subcompleteness, and show that this class of forcings enjoys some closure properties that the original class of subcomplete forcings does not seem to have: factors of \(\varepsilon \)-subcomplete forcings are \(\varepsilon \)-subcomplete, and if \(\mathbb {P}\) and \(\mathbb {Q}\) are forcing-equivalent notions, then \(\mathbb {P}\) is \(\varepsilon \)-subcomplete iff \(\mathbb {Q}\) is. I formulate a Two Step Theorem for \(\varepsilon \)-subcompleteness and prove an RCS iteration theorem for \(\varepsilon \)-subcompleteness which is slightly less restrictive than the original one, in that its formulation is more careful about the amount of collapsing necessary. Finally, I show that an adequate degree of \(\varepsilon \)-subcompleteness follows from the \(\kappa \)-distributivity of a forcing, for \(\kappa >\omega _1\).     

Second-Order Optimality and Beyond: Characterization and Evaluation Complexity in Convexly Constrained Nonlinear Optimization

High-order optimality conditions for convexly constrained nonlinear optimization problems are analysed. A corresponding (expensive) measure of criticality for arbitrary order is proposed and extended to define high-order \(\epsilon \)-approximate critical points. This new measure is then used within a conceptual trust-region algorithm to show that if derivatives of the objective function up to order \(q \ge 1\) can be evaluated and are Lipschitz continuous, then this algorithm applied to the convexly constrained problem needs at most \(O(\epsilon ^{-(q+1)})\) evaluations of f and its derivatives to compute an \(\epsilon \)-approximate qth-order critical point. This provides the first evaluation complexity result for critical points of arbitrary order in nonlinear optimization. An example is discussed, showing that the obtained evaluation complexity bounds are essentially sharp.     

Epsilon substitution for $$\textit{ID}_1$$ via cut-elimination

The \(\epsilon \)-substitution method is a technique for giving consistency proofs for theories of arithmetic. We use this technique to give a proof of the consistency of the impredicative theory \(\textit{ID}_1\) using a variant of the cut-elimination formalism introduced by Mints.