Lagrangian Rabinowitz Floer homology and twisted cotangent bundles

We study the following rigidity problem in symplectic geometry: can one displace a Lagrangian submanifold from a hypersurface? We relate this to the Arnold Chord Conjecture, and introduce a refined question about the existence of relative leaf-wise intersection points, which are the Lagrangian-theoretic analogue of the notion of leaf-wise intersection points defined by Moser (Acta. Math. 141(1–2):17–34, 1978). Our tool is Lagrangian Rabinowitz Floer homology, which we define first for Liouville domains and exact Lagrangian submanifolds with Legendrian boundary. We then extend this to the ‘virtually contact’ setting. By means of an Abbondandolo–Schwarz short exact sequence we compute the Lagrangian Rabinowitz Floer homology of certain regular level sets of Tonelli Hamiltonians of sufficiently high energy in twisted cotangent bundles, where the Lagrangians are conormal bundles. We deduce that in this situation a generic Hamiltonian diffeomorphism has infinitely many relative leaf-wise intersection points.     

The isodiametric problem with lattice-point constraints

In this paper, the isodiametric problem for centrally symmetric convex bodies in the Euclidean d-space \Bbb R^d{\Bbb R}^d containing no interior non-zero point of a lattice L is studied. It is shown that the intersection of a suitable ball with the Dirichlet-Voronoi cell of 2L is extremal, i.e., it has minimum diameter among all bodies with the same volume. It is conjectured that these sets are the only extremal bodies, which is proved for all three dimensional and several prominent lattices.     

On neighborly families of convex bodies

A family of convex bodies in E^d is called neighborly if the intersection of every two of them is (d-1)-dimensional. In the present paper we prove that there is an infinite neighborly family of centrally symmetric convex bodies in E^d, d 3, such that every two of them are affinely equivalent (i.e., there is an affine transformation mapping one of them onto another), the bodies have large groups of affine automorphisms, and the volumes of the bodies are prescribed. We also prove that there is an infinite neighborly family of centrally symmetric convex bodies in E^d such that the bodies have large groups of symmetries. These two results are answers to a problem of B. Grünbaum (1963). We prove also that there exist arbitrarily large neighborly families of similar convex d-polytopes in E^d with prescribed diameters and with arbitrarily large groups of symmetries of the polytopes.     

On the structure of convex sets with symmetries

Asymmetry of a compact convex body L ì Rⁿ{\mathcal L \subset {\bf R}^n} viewed from an interior point O{\mathcal O} can be measured by considering how far L{\mathcal L} is from its inscribed simplices that contain O{\mathcal O}. This leads to a measure of symmetry s(L, O){\sigma(\mathcal L, \mathcal O)}. The interior of L{\mathcal L} naturally splits into regular and singular sets, where the singular set consists of points O{\mathcal O} with largest possible s(L, O){\sigma(\mathcal L, \mathcal O)}. In general, to calculate the singular set of a compact convex body is difficult. In this paper we determine a large subset of the singular set in centrally symmetric compact convex bodies truncated by hyperplane cuts. As a function of the interior point O{\mathcal O}, s(L, .){\sigma(\mathcal L, .)} is concave on the regular set. It is natural to ask to what extent does concavity of s(L, .){\sigma(\mathcal L, .)} extend to the whole (interior) of L{\mathcal L}. It has been shown earlier that in dimension two, s(L, .){\sigma(\mathcal L, .)} is concave on L{\mathcal L}. In this paper, we show that in dimensions greater than two, for a centrally symmetric compact convex body L{\mathcal L}, s(L, .){\sigma(\mathcal L, .)} is a non-concave function provided that L{\mathcal L} has a codimension one simplicial intersection. This is the case, for example, for the n-dimensional cube, n ≥ 3. This non-concavity result relies on the fact that a centrally symmetric compact convex body has no regular points.     

On toric h-vectors of centrally symmetric polytopes

We prove tight lower bounds for the coefficients of the toric h-vector of an arbitrary centrally symmetric polytope generalizing previous results due to R. Stanley and the author using toric varieties. Our proof here is based on the theory of combinatorial intersection cohomology for normal fans of polytopes developed by G. Barthel, J.-P. Brasselet, K. Fieseler and L. Kaup, and independently by P. Bressler and V. Lunts. This theory is also valid for nonrational polytopes when there is no standard correspondence with toric varieties. In this way we can establish our bounds for centrally symmetric polytopes even without requiring them to be rational. Received: 24 March 2004     

Contact complete integrability

Complete integrability in a symplectic setting means the existence of a Lagrangian foliation leaf-wise preserved by the dynamics. In the paper we describe complete integrability in a contact set-up as a more subtle structure: a flag of two foliations, Legendrian and co-Legendrian, and a holonomy-invariant transverse measure of the former in the latter. This turns out to be equivalent to the existence of a canonical ? ? ? ^n?1 structure on the leaves of the co-Legendrian foliation. Further, the above structure implies the existence of n commuting contact fields preserving a special contact 1-form, thus providing the geometric framework and establishing equivalence with previously known definitions of contact integrability. We also show that contact completely integrable systems are solvable in quadratures. We present an example of contact complete integrability: the billiard system inside an ellipsoid in pseudo-Euclidean space, restricted to the space of oriented null geodesics. We describe a surprising acceleration mechanism for closed light-like billiard trajectories.     

Infinitely many leaf-wise intersections on cotangent bundles

If the homology of the free loop space of a closed manifold B$B$ is infinite dimensional then generically there exist infinitely many leaf-wise intersection points for fiberwise star-shaped hypersurfaces in T^∗B$T^{\ast }B$. We illustrate this in the case of the restricted three body problem.     

Contraction and Expansion of Convex Sets

Let S{\mathcal{S}} be a set system of convex sets in ℝ ^d . Helly’s theorem states that if all sets in S{\mathcal{S}} have empty intersection, then there is a subset S￠ ì S{\mathcal{S}}'\subset{\mathcal{S}} of size d+1 which also has empty intersection. The conclusion fails, of course, if the sets in S{\mathcal{S}} are not convex or if S{\mathcal{S}} does not have empty intersection. Nevertheless, in this work we present Helly-type theorems relevant to these cases with the aid of a new pair of operations, affine-invariant contraction, and expansion of convex sets. These operations generalize the simple scaling of centrally symmetric sets. The operations are continuous, i.e., for small ε>0, the contraction C ^−ε and the expansion C ^ε are close (in the Hausdorff distance) to C. We obtain two results. The first extends Helly’s theorem to the case of set systems with nonempty intersection:     

Translational tilings by a polytope, with multiplicity

We study the problem of covering ? ^d by overlapping translates of a convex polytope, such that almost every point of ? ^d is covered exactly k times. Such a covering of Euclidean space by a discrete set of translations is called a k-tiling. The investigation of simple tilings by translations (which we call 1-tilings in this context) began with the work of Fedorov [5] and Minkowski [15], and was later extended by Venkov and McMullen to give a complete characterization of all convex objects that 1-tile ? ^d . By contrast, for k ≥2, the collection of polytopes that k-tile is much wider than the collection of polytopes that 1-tile, and there is currently no known analogous characterization for the polytopes that k-tile. Here we first give the necessary conditions for polytopes P that k-tile, by proving that if P k-tiles ? ^d by translations, then it is centrally symmetric, and its facets are also centrally symmetric. These are the analogues of Minkowski’s conditions for 1-tiling polytopes, but it turns out that very new methods are necessary for the development of the theory. In the case that P has rational vertices, we also prove that the converse is true; that is, if P is a rational polytope, is centrally symmetric, and has centrally symmetric facets, then P must k-tile ? ^d for some positive integer k.     

The unit ball is an attractor of the intersection body operator

The intersection body of a ball is again a ball. So, the unit ball Bd⊂Rd is a fixed point of the intersection body operator acting on the space of all star-shaped origin symmetric bodies endowed with the Banach–Mazur distance. E. Lutwak asked if there is any other star-shaped body that satisfies this property. We show that this fixed point is a local attractor, i.e., that the iterations of the intersection body operator applied to any star-shaped origin symmetric body sufficiently close to Bd in Banach–Mazur distance converge to Bd in Banach–Mazur distance. In particular, it follows that the intersection body operator has no other fixed or periodic points in a small neighborhood of Bd. We will also discuss a harmonic analysis version of this question, which studies the Radon transforms of powers of a given function.     

Two related extremal problems for entire functions of several variables

We establish a relationship between the Logan problem for functions whose Fourier transform is supported in a centrally symmetric convex closed subset of ℝ ^m and whose mean value on ℝ ^m is nonnegative and the Chernykh problem on the optimal point for the Jackson inequality inL ₂(ℝ ^m ), which relates the best approximation of a function by the class of entire functions of exponential type to the first modulus of continuity. Both problems are solved exactly in several cases. Translated fromMatematicheskie Zametki, Vol. 66, No. 3, pp. 336–350, September, 1999.     

Sets with a mode

LetM be a point andS be a compact set inR ² such thatS is the closure of its interior. The theorem desired says that ifM is a mode ofS thenS is convex and centrally symmetric with respect toM. Some conditions on the boundary ofS are needed for the proof given.     

An Upper and a Lower Bound Theorem for Combinatorial 4-Manifolds

In this paper we prove two inequalities. The first one gives a lower bound for the Euler characteristic of a tight combinatorial 4-manifold M under the additional assumptions that |M| is 1-connected, that M is a subcomplex of H (M) , and that H (M) is a centrally symmetric and simplicial d -polytope. The second inequality relates the Euler characteristic with the number of vertices of a combinatorial 4-manifold admitting a fixed-point free involution. Furthermore, we construct a new and highly symmetric 12-vertex triangulation of S ² x S ² realizing equality in each of these inequalities. Received January 23, 1996, and in revised form September 13, 1996.     

On a conjecture of Grünbaum concerning partitions of convex sets

In this paper the following is proved: let K ∈ ℝ² be a convex body and t ∈ [0, 1/4]. If the diameter of K is at least √37 times the minimum width, then there is a pair of orthogonal lines that partition K into four pieces of areas t, t, (1/2−t), (1/2−t) in clockwise order. Furthermore, if K is centrally symmetric, then we can replace the factor √37 by 3.     

Kronecker product approximations for image restoration with anti‐reflective boundary conditions

The anti‐reflective boundary condition for image restoration was recently introduced as a mathematically desirable alternative to other boundary conditions presently represented in the literature. It has been shown that, given a centrally symmetric point spread function (PSF), this boundary condition gives rise to a structured blurring matrix, a submatrix of which can be diagonalized by the discrete sine transform (DST), leading to an O(n² log n) solution algorithm for an image of size n × n. In this paper, we obtain a Kronecker product approximation of the general structured blurring matrix that arises under this boundary condition, regardless of symmetry properties of the PSF. We then demonstrate the usefulness and efficiency of our approximation in an SVD‐based restoration algorithm, the computational cost of which would otherwise be prohibitive. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Arbitrarily large neighborly families of symmetric convex polytopes

A family of convex d-polytopes in E _d is called neighborly if every two of them have a (d–1)-dimensional intersection. Settling an old problem of B. Grünbaum, we show that there exist arbitrarily large neighborly families of centrally (or any other prescribed type of) symmetric convex d-poliytopes in E _d ,for all d3; moreover, they can all be congruent, if d4.A version of this paper has been written while the author visited R. K. Guy in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, in the summer of 1981; the author wishes to thank Louise and Richard Guy for their warm hospitality.     

Some remarks concerning kissing numbers,blocking numbers and covering numbers

This article shows an inequality concerning blocking numbers and Hadwiger's covering numbers and presents a strange phenomenon concerning kissing numbers and blocking numbers. As a simple corollary, we can improve the known upper bounds for Hadwiger's covering numbers ford-dimensional centrally symmetric convex bodies to 3 ^d –1.     

Polygons inscribed in a closed curve and a three-dimensional convex body

Here are samples of results obtained in the paper. Let γ be a centrally symmetric closed curve in ℝ ⁿ that does not contain its center of symmetry, O. Then γ is circumscribed about a square (with center O), as well as about a rhombus (also with center O) whose vertices split γ into parts of equal length. If n is odd, then there is a centrally symmetric equilateral 2n-link polyline inscribed in γ and lying in a hyperplane. Let K ⊂ ℝ³ be a convex body, and let x ∈ (0; 1). Then K is circumscribed about an affine-regular pentagonal prism P such that the ratio of the lateral edge l of P to the longest chord of K parallel to l is equal to x. Bibliography: 7 titles.     

HYPERPLANE TRANSVERSALS OF HOMOTHETICAL,CENTRALLY SYMMETRIC POLYTOPES

Let P ⊂ R ⁿ be a centrally symmetric, convex n-polytope with 2r vertices, n ≥ 2. Let P be a family of m ≥ n + 1 homothetical copies of P. Based on an algorithmical approach to center hyperplanes of finite point sets in Minkowski spaces with polyhedral norms, we show that a hyperplane transversal of all members of P (if it exists) can be found in O(rm) time when the dimension n is fixed. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

General Existence Theorem of Zero Points

Let X be a nonempty, compact, convex set in and let be an upper semicontinuous mapping from X to the collection of nonempty, compact, convex subsets of . It is well known that such a mapping has a stationary point on X; i.e., there exists a point X such that its image under has a nonempty intersection with the normal cone of X at the point. In the case where, for every point in X, it holds that the intersection of the image under with the normal cone of X at the point is either empty or contains the origin 0 ⁿ , then must have a zero point on X; i.e., there exists a point in X such that 0 ⁿ lies in the image of the point. Another well-known condition for the existence of a zero point follows from the Ky Fan coincidence theorem, which says that, if for every point the intersection of the image with the tangent cone of X at the point is nonempty, the mapping must have a zero point. In this paper, we extend all these existence results by giving a general zero-point existence theorem, of which the previous two results are obtained as special cases. We discuss also what kind of solutions may exist when no further conditions are stated on the mapping . Finally, we show how our results can be used to establish several new intersection results on a compact, convex set.