Iterations of holomorphic Collet-Eckmann maps: conformal and invariant measures. Appendix: On non-renormalizable quadratic polynomials

We prove that for every rational map on the Riemann sphere , if for every -critical point whose forward trajectory does not contain any other critical point, the growth of is at least of order for an appropriate constant as , then . Here is the so-called essential, dynamical or hyperbolic dimension, is Hausdorff dimension of and is the minimal exponent for conformal measures on . If it is assumed additionally that there are no periodic parabolic points then the Minkowski dimension (other names: box dimension, limit capacity) of also coincides with . We prove ergodicity of every -conformal measure on assuming has one critical point , no parabolic, and . Finally for every -conformal measure on (satisfying an additional assumption), assuming an exponential growth of , we prove the existence of a probability absolutely continuous with respect to , -invariant measure. In the Appendix we prove also for every non-renormalizable quadratic polynomial with not in the main cardioid in the Mandelbrot set.

     

Asymptotics for minimal discrete energy on the sphere

We investigate the energy of arrangements of points on the surface of the unit sphere in that interact through a power law potential where and is Euclidean distance. With denoting the minimal energy for such -point arrangements we obtain bounds (valid for all ) for in the cases when and . For , we determine the precise asymptotic behavior of as . As a corollary, lower bounds are given for the separation of any pair of points in an -point minimal energy configuration, when . For the unit sphere in , we present two conjectures concerning the asymptotic expansion of that relate to the zeta function for a hexagonal lattice in the plane. We prove an asymptotic upper bound that supports the first of these conjectures. Of related interest, we derive an asymptotic formula for the partial sums of when (the divergent case).

     

Factorisation in nest algebras. II

The main result of this paper is Theorem 5, which provides a necessary and sufficient condition on a positive operator for the existence of an operator in the nest algebra of a nest satisfying (resp. . In Section 3 we give a new proof of a result of Power concerning outer factorisation of operators. We also show that a positive operator has the property that there exists for every nest an operator in satisfying (resp. ) if and only if is a Fredholm operator. In Section 4 we show that for a given operator in there exists an operator in satisfying if and only if the range of is equal to the range of some operator in . We also determine the algebraic structure of the set of ranges of operators in . Let be the set of positive operators for which there exists an operator in satisfying . In Section 5 we obtain information about this set. In particular we discuss the following question: Assume and are positive operators such that and belongs to . Which further conditions permit us to conclude that belongs to ?

     

Contiguous relations, continued fractions and orthogonality

We examine a special linear combination of balanced very-well-poised basic hypergeometric series that is known to satisfy a transformation. We call this and show that it satisfies certain three-term contiguous relations. From two of these contiguous relations for we obtain fifty-six pairwise linearly independent solutions to a three-term recurrence that generalizes the recurrence for Askey-Wilson polynomials. The associated continued fraction is evaluated using Pincherle's theorem. From this continued fraction we are able to derive a discrete system of biorthogonal rational functions. This ties together Wilson's results for rational biorthogonality, Watson's -analogue of Ramanujan's Entry 40 continued fraction, and a conjecture of Askey concerning the latter. Some new -series identities are also obtained. One is an important three-term transformation for 's which generalizes all the known two- and three-term transformations. Others are new and unexpected quadratic identities for these very-well-poised 's.

     

Derivations, isomorphisms, and second cohomology of generalized Witt algebras

Generalized Witt algebras, over a field of characteristic , were defined by Kawamoto about 12 years ago. Using different notations from Kawamoto's, we give an essentially equivalent definition of generalized Witt algebras over , where the ingredients are an abelian group , a vector space over , and a map which is linear in the first variable and additive in the second one. In this paper, the derivations of any generalized Witt algebra
, with the right kernel of being , are explicitly described; the isomorphisms between any two simple generalized Witt algebras are completely determined; and the second cohomology group for any simple generalized Witt algebra is computed. The derivations, the automorphisms and the second cohomology groups of some special generalized Witt algebras have been studied by several other authors as indicated in the references.

     

An intersection number for the punctual Hilbert scheme of a surface

We compute the intersection number between two cycles and of complementary dimensions in the Hilbert scheme parameterizing subschemes of given finite length of a smooth projective surface . The -cycle corresponds to the set of finite closed subschemes the support of which has cardinality 1. The -cycle consists of the closed subschemes the support of which is one given point of the surface. Since is contained in , indirect methods are needed. The intersection number is , answering a question by H. Nakajima.

     

Tauberian theorems and stability of solutions of the Cauchy problem

Let be a bounded, strongly measurable function with values in a Banach space , and let be the singular set of the Laplace transform in . Suppose that is countable and uniformly for , as , for each in . It is shown that

as , for each in ; in particular, if is uniformly continuous. This result is similar to a Tauberian theorem of Arendt and Batty. It is obtained by applying a result of the authors concerning local stability of bounded semigroups to the translation semigroup on , and it implies several results concerning stability of solutions of Cauchy problems.

     

A -deformation of a trivial symmetric group action

Let be the arrangement of hyperplanes consisting of the reflecting hyperplanes for the root system . Let be the Varchenko matrix for this arrangement with all hyperplane parameters equal to . We show that is the matrix with rows and columns indexed by permutations with entry equal to where is the number of inversions of . Equivalently is the matrix for left multiplication on by

Clearly commutes with the right-regular action of on . A general theorem of Varchenko applied in this special case shows that is singular exactly when is a root of for some between and . In this paper we prove two results which partially solve the problem (originally posed by Varchenko) of describing the -module structure of the nullspace of in the case that is singular. Our first result is that

in the case that where Lie denotes the multilinear part of the free Lie algebra with generators. Our second result gives an elegant formula for the determinant of restricted to the virtual -module with characteristic the power sum symmetric function .

     

Induction theorems on the stable rationality of the center of the ring of generic matrices

Following Procesi and Formanek, the center of the division ring of generic matrices over the complex numbers is stably equivalent to the fixed field under the action of , of the function field of the group algebra of a -lattice, denoted by . We study the question of the stable rationality of the center over the complex numbers when is a prime, in this module theoretic setting. Let be the normalizer of an -sylow subgroup of . Let be a -lattice. We show that under certain conditions on , induction-restriction from to does not affect the stable type of the corresponding field. In particular, and are stably isomorphic and the isomorphism preserves the -action. We further reduce the problem to the study of the localization of at the prime ; all other primes behave well. We also present new simple proofs for the stable rationality of over , in the cases and .

     

Covers of algebraic varieties III. The discriminant of a cover of degree 4 and the trigonal construction

For each Gorenstein cover of degree we define a scheme and a generically finite map of degree called the discriminant of . Using this construction we deal with smooth degree covers with . Moreover we also generalize the trigonal construction of S. Recillas.

     

A classification theorem for Albert algebras

Let be a field whose characteristic is different from 2 and 3 and let be a quadratic extension. In this paper we prove that for a fixed, degree 3 central simple algebra over with an involution of the second kind over , the Jordan algebra , obtained through Tits' second construction is determined up to isomorphism by the class of in , thus settling a question raised by Petersson and Racine. As a consequence, we derive a ``Skolem Noether' type theorem for Albert algebras. We also show that the cohomological invariants determine the isomorphism class of , if is fixed.

     

Morita equivalence for crossed products by Hilbert -bimodules

We introduce the notion of the crossed product of a -algebra by a Hilbert -bimodule . It is shown that given a -algebra which carries a semi-saturated action of the circle group (in the sense that is generated by the spectral subspaces and ), then is isomorphic to the crossed product . We then present our main result, in which we show that the crossed products and are strongly Morita equivalent to each other, provided that and are strongly Morita equivalent under an imprimitivity bimodule satisfying as Hilbert -bimodules. We also present a six-term exact sequence for -groups of crossed products by Hilbert -bimodules.

     

Geometry of families of nodal curves on the blown-up projective plane

Let be the projective plane blown up at generic points. Denote by the strict transform of a generic straight line on and the exceptional divisors of the blown-up points on respectively. We consider the variety of all irreducible curves in with nodes as the only singularities and give asymptotically nearly optimal sufficient conditions for its smoothness, irreducibility and non-emptiness. Moreover, we extend our conditions for the smoothness and the irreducibility to families of reducible curves. For we give the complete answer concerning the existence of nodal curves in .

     

Approximation of the equilibrium distribution by distributions of equal point charges with minimal energy

Let denote the classical equilibrium distribution (of total charge ) on a convex or -smooth conductor in with nonempty interior. Also, let be any th order ``Fekete equilibrium distribution' on , defined by point charges at th order ``Fekete points'. (By definition such a distribution minimizes the energy for -tuples of point charges on .) We measure the approximation to by for by estimating the differences in potentials and fields,

both inside and outside the conductor . For dimension we obtain uniform estimates at distance from the outer boundary of . Observe that throughout the interior of (Faraday cage phenomenon of electrostatics), hence on the compact subsets of . For the exterior of the precise results are obtained by comparison of potentials and energies. Admissible sets have to be regular relative to capacity and their boundaries must allow good Harnack inequalities. For the passage to interior estimates we develop additional machinery, including integral representations for potentials of measures on Lipschitz boundaries and bounds on normal derivatives of interior and exterior Green functions. Earlier, one of us had considered approximations to the equilibrium distribution by arbitrary distributions of equal point charges on . In that context there is an important open problem for the sphere which is discussed at the end of the paper.

     

Approximation by polynomials with nonnegative coefficients and the spectral theory of positive operators

For a compact subset of symmetric with respect to conjugation and a continuous function, we obtain sharp conditions on and that insure that can be approximated uniformly on by polynomials with nonnegative coefficients. For a real Banach space, a closed but not necessarily normal cone with , and a bounded linear operator with , we use these approximation theorems to investigate when the spectral radius of belongs to its spectrum . A special case of our results is that if is a Hilbert space, is normal and the 1-dimensional Lebesgue measure of is zero, then . However, we also give an example of a normal operator (where is unitary and ) for which and .

     

Generalized Hestenes' Lemma and extension of functions

Suppose we have an -jet field on which is a Whitney field on the nonsingular part of . We show that, under certain hypotheses about the relationship between geodesic and euclidean distance on , if the field is flat enough at the singular part , then it is a Whitney field on (the order of flatness required depends on the coefficients in the hypotheses). These hypotheses are satisfied when is subanalytic. In Section II, we show that a function on can be extended to one on if the differential goes to faster than the order of divergence of the principal curvatures of and if the first covariant derivative of is sufficiently flat. For the general case of functions with , we give a similar result for in Section III.

     

Widths of Subgroups

We say that the width of an infinite subgroup in is if there exists a collection of essentially distinct conjugates of such that the intersection of any two elements of the collection is infinite and is maximal possible. We define the width of a finite subgroup to be . We prove that a quasiconvex subgroup of a negatively curved group has finite width. It follows that geometrically finite surfaces in closed hyperbolic -manifolds satisfy the -plane property for some .

     

On the classification of irregular surfaces of general type with nonbirational bicanonical map

The present paper is devoted to the classification of irregular surfaces of general type with and nonbirational bicanonical map. Our main result is that, if is such a surface and if is minimal with no pencil of curves of genus , then is the symmetric product of a curve of genus , and therefore and . Furthermore we obtain some results towards the classification of minimal surfaces with . Such surfaces have , and we show that if and only if is the symmetric product of a curve of genus . We also classify the minimal surfaces with with a pencil of curves of genus , proving in particular that for those one has .

     

Extremal vectors and invariant subspaces

For a bounded linear operator on Hilbert space we define a sequence of so-called minimal vectors in connection with invariant subspaces and show that this presents a new approach to invariant subspaces. In particular, we show that for any compact operator some weak limit of the sequence of minimal vectors is noncyclic for all operators commuting with and that for any normal operator , the norm limit of the sequence of minimal vectors is noncyclic for all operators commuting with . Thus, we give a new and more constructive proof of existence of invariant subspaces. The sequence of minimal vectors does not seem to converge in norm for an arbitrary bounded linear operator. We will prove that if belongs to a certain class of operators, then the sequence of such vectors converges in norm, and that if belongs to a subclass of , then the norm limit is cyclic.