On the eigenvalues and spectral radius of starlike trees

Let \(k\ge 1\) and \(n_1,\ldots ,n_k\ge 1\) be some integers. Let \(S(n_1,\ldots ,n_k)\) be a tree T such that T has a vertex v of degree k and \(T{\setminus } v\) is the disjoint union of the paths \(P_{n_1},\ldots ,P_{n_k}\), that is \(T{\setminus } v\cong P_{n_1}\cup \cdots \cup P_{n_k}\) so that every neighbor of v in T has degree one or two. The tree \(S(n_1,\ldots ,n_k)\) is called starlike tree, a tree with exactly one vertex of degree greater than two, if \(k\ge 3\). In this paper we obtain the eigenvalues of starlike trees. We find some bounds for the largest eigenvalue (for the spectral radius) of starlike trees. In particular we prove that if \(k\ge 4\) and \(n_1,\ldots ,n_k\ge 2\), then \(\frac{k-1}{\sqrt{k-2}}<\lambda _1(S(n_1,\ldots ,n_k))<\frac{k}{\sqrt{k-1}}\), where \(\lambda _1(T)\) is the largest eigenvalue of T. Finally we characterize all starlike trees that all of whose eigenvalues are in the interval \((-2,2)\).     

Polynomially linked additive functions—II

We continue the study of additive functions \(f_k:R\rightarrow F \;(1\le k\le n)\) linked by an equation of the form \(\sum _{k=1}^n p_k(x)f_k(q_k(x))=0\), where the \(p_k\) and \(q_k\) are polynomials, R is an integral domain of characteristic 0, and F is the fraction field of R. A method is presented for solving all such equations. We also consider the special case \(\sum _{k=1}^n x^{m_k}f_k(x^{j_k})=0\) in which the \(p_k\) and \(q_k\) are monomials. In this case we show that if there is no duplication, i.e. if \((m_k,j_k)\ne (m_p,j_p)\) for \(k\ne p\), then each \(f_k\) is the sum of a linear function and a derivation of order at most \(n-1\). Furthermore, if this functional equation is not homogeneous then the maximal orders of the derivations are reduced in a specified way.     

The crank moments weighted by the parity of cranks

In this note, we introduce the 2kth crank moment \(\mu _{2k}(-1,n)\) weighted by the parity of cranks and show that \((-1)^n \mu _{2k}(-1,n)>0\) for \(n\ge k \ge 0\). When \(k=0\), the inequality \((-1)^n \mu _{2k}(-1,n)>0\) reduces to Andrews and Lewis’s inequality \((-1)^n(M_e(n)-M_o(n))>0\) for \(n\ge 0\), where \(M_e(n)\) (resp. \(M_o(n)\)) denotes the number of partitions of n with even (resp. odd) crank. Several generating functions of \(\mu _{2k}(-1,n)\) are also studied in order to show the positivity of \((-1)^n\mu _{2k}(-1,n)\).     

Improved upper bounds for partial spreads

A partial \((k-1)\)-spread in \({\text {PG}}(n-1,q)\) is a collection of \((k-1)\)-dimensional subspaces with trivial intersection. So far, the maximum size of a partial \((k-1)\)-spread in \({\text {PG}}(n-1,q)\) was known for the cases \(n\equiv 0\pmod k\), \(n\equiv 1\pmod k\), and \(n\equiv 2\pmod k\) with the additional requirements \(q=2\) and \(k=3\). We completely resolve the case \(n\equiv 2\pmod k\) for the binary case \(q=2\).     

Constructive Approximation in de Branges–Rovnyak Spaces

In most classical holomorphic function spaces on the unit disk in which the polynomials are dense, a function f can be approximated in norm by its dilates \(f_r(z):=f(rz)~(r<1)\). We show that this is not the case for the de Branges–Rovnyak spaces \(\mathcal{H}(b)\). More precisely, we exhibit a space \(\mathcal{H}(b)\) in which the polynomials are dense and a function \(f\in \mathcal{H}(b)\) such that \(\lim _{r\rightarrow 1^-}\Vert f_r\Vert _{\mathcal{H}(b)}=\infty \). On the positive side, we prove the following approximation theorem for Toeplitz operators on general de Branges–Rovnyak spaces \(\mathcal{H}(b)\). If \((h_n)\) is a sequence in \(H^\infty \) such that \(\Vert h_n\Vert _{H^\infty }\le 1\) and \(h_n(0)\rightarrow 1\), then \(\Vert T_{\overline{h}_n}f-f\Vert _{\mathcal{H}(b)}\rightarrow 0\) for all \(f\in \mathcal{H}(b)\). Using this result, we give the first constructive proof that, if b is a nonextreme point of the unit ball of \(H^\infty \), then the polynomials are dense in \(\mathcal{H}(b)\).     

Weak type (1, 1) of some operators for the Laplacian with drift

Let \(v = (v_1, \ldots , v_n)\) be a vector in \(\mathbb {R}^n {\setminus } \{ 0 \}\). Consider the Laplacian on \(\mathbb {R}^n\) with drift \(\Delta _{v} = \sum _{i = 1}^n \Big ( \frac{\partial ^2}{\partial x_i^2} + 2 v_i \frac{\partial }{\partial x_i} \Big )\) and the measure \(d\mu (x) = e^{2 \langle v, x \rangle } dx\), with respect to which \(\Delta _{v}\) is self-adjoint. Let d and \(\nabla \) denote the Euclidean distance and the gradient operator on \(\mathbb {R}^n\). Consider the space \((\mathbb {R}^n, d, d\mu )\), which has the property of exponential volume growth. We obtain weak type (1, 1) for the Riesz transform \(\nabla (- \Delta _{v} )^{-\frac{1}{2}}\) and for the heat maximal operator, with respect to \(d\mu \). Further, we prove that the uncentered Hardy–Littlewood maximal operator is bounded on \(L^p\) for \(1 < p \le +\infty \) but not of weak type (1, 1) if \(n \ge 2\).     

Analytic sets and extension of holomorphic maps of positive codimension

Let D, \(D'\) be arbitrary domains in \({\mathbb C}^n\) and \({\mathbb C}^N\) respectively, \(1<n\le N\), both possibly unbounded and \(M \subseteq \partial D\), \(M'\subseteq \partial D'\) be open pieces of the boundaries. Suppose that \(\partial D\) is smooth real-analytic and minimal in an open neighborhood of \({\bar{M}}\) and \(\partial D'\) is smooth real-algebraic and minimal in an open neighborhood of \({\bar{M}'}\). Let \(f: D\rightarrow D'\) be a holomorphic mapping such that the cluster set \(\mathrm{cl}_{f}(M)\) does not intersect \(D'\). It is proved that if the cluster set \(\mathrm{cl}_{f}(p)\) of some point \(p\in M\) contains some point \(q\in M'\) and the graph of f extends as an analytic set to a neighborhood of \((p, q)\in {\mathbb {C}}^n \times {\mathbb C}^N\), then f extends as a holomorphic map to a dense subset of some neighborhood of p. If in addition, \(M =\partial D\), \(M'=\partial D'\) and \(M'\) is compact, then f extends holomorphically across an open dense subset of \(\partial D\).     

Some results on generalized strong external difference families

A generalized strong external difference family (briefly \((v, m; k_1,\dots ,k_m; \lambda _1,\dots ,\lambda _m)\)-GSEDF) was introduced by Paterson and Stinson in 2016. In this paper, we give some nonexistence results for GSEDFs. In particular, we prove that a \((v, 3;k_1,k_2,k_3; \lambda _1,\lambda _2,\lambda _3)\)-GSEDF does not exist when \(k_1+k_2+k_3< v\). We also give a first recursive construction for GSEDFs and prove that if there is a \((v,2;2\lambda ,\frac{v-1}{2};\lambda ,\lambda )\)-GSEDF, then there is a \((vt,2;4\lambda ,\frac{vt-1}{2};2\lambda ,2\lambda )\)-GSEDF with \(v>1\), \(t>1\) and \(v\equiv t\equiv 1\pmod 2\). Then we use it to obtain some new GSEDFs for \(m=2\). In particular, for any prime power q with \(q\equiv 1\pmod 4\), we show that there exists a \((qt, 2;(q-1)2^{n-1},\frac{qt-1}{2};(q-1)2^{n-2},(q-1)2^{n-2})\)-GSEDF, where \(t=p_1p_2\dots p_n\), \(p_i>1\), \(1\le i\le n\), \(p_1, p_2,\dots ,p_n\) are odd integers.     

Semidefinite bounds for nonbinary codes based on quadruples

For nonnegative integers q, n, d, let \(A_q(n,d)\) denote the maximum cardinality of a code of length n over an alphabet [q] with q letters and with minimum distance at least d. We consider the following upper bound on \(A_q(n,d)\). For any k, let \(\mathcal{C}_k\) be the collection of codes of cardinality at most k. Then \(A_q(n,d)\) is at most the maximum value of \(\sum _{v\in [q]^n}x(\{v\})\), where x is a function \(\mathcal{C}_4\rightarrow {\mathbb {R}}_+\) such that \(x(\emptyset )=1\) and \(x(C)=\!0\) if C has minimum distance less than d, and such that the \(\mathcal{C}_2\times \mathcal{C}_2\) matrix \((x(C\cup C'))_{C,C'\in \mathcal{C}_2}\) is positive semidefinite. By the symmetry of the problem, we can apply representation theory to reduce the problem to a semidefinite programming problem with order bounded by a polynomial in n. It yields the new upper bounds \(A_4(6,3)\le 176\), \(A_4(7,3)\le 596\), \(A_4(7,4)\le 155\), \(A_5(7,4)\le 489\), and \(A_5(7,5)\le 87\).     

Universal Cycle Packings and Coverings for <Emphasis Type="Italic">k</Emphasis>-Subsets of an <Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis>-Set

A cyclic sequence of elements of [n] is an (n, k)-Ucycle packing (respectively, (n, k)-Ucycle covering) if every k-subset of [n] appears in this sequence at most once (resp. at least once) as a subsequence of consecutive terms. Let \(p_{n,k}\) be the length of a longest (n, k)-Ucycle packing and \(c_{n,k}\) the length of a shortest (n, k)-Ucycle covering. We show that, for a fixed \(k,p_{n,k}={n\atopwithdelims ()k}-O(n^{\lfloor k/2\rfloor })\). Moreover, when k is not fixed, we prove that if \(k=k(n)\le n^{\alpha }\), where \(0<\alpha <1/3\), then \(p_{n,k}={n\atopwithdelims ()k}-o({n\atopwithdelims ()k}^\beta )\) and \(c_{n,k}={n\atopwithdelims ()k}+o({n\atopwithdelims ()k}^\beta )\), for some \(\beta <1\). Finally, we show that if \(k=o(n)\), then \(p_{n,k}={n\atopwithdelims ()k}(1-o(1))\).     

Monochromatic Solutions for Multi-Term Unknowns

Given integers \(k\ge 2\), \(n \ge 2\), \(m \ge 2\) and \( a_1,a_2,\ldots ,a_m \in {\mathbb {Z}}{\backslash }{\{0\}}\), and let \(f(z)= \sum _{j=0}^{n}c_jz^j\) be a polynomial of integer coefficients with \(c_n>0\) and \((\sum _{i=1}^ma_i)|f(z)\) for some integer z. For a k-coloring of \([N]=\{1,2,\ldots ,N\}\), we say that there is a monochromatic solution of the equation \(a_1x_1+a_2x_2+\cdots +a_mx_m=f(z)\) if there exist pairwise distinct \(x_1,x_2,\ldots ,x_m\in [N]\) all of the same color such that the equation holds for some \(z\in \mathbb {Z}\). Problems of this type are often referred to as Ramsey-type problems. In this paper, it is shown that if \(a_i>0\) for \(1\le i\le m\), then there exists an integer \(N_0=N(k,m,n)\) such that for \(N\ge N_0\), each k-coloring of [N] contains a monochromatic solution \(x_1,x_2,\ldots ,x_m\) of the equation \(a_1x_1+a_2x_2+ \cdots +a_mx_m= f(z)\). Moreover, if n is odd and there are \(a_i\) and \(a_j\) such that \(a_ia_j<0\) for some \(1 \le i\ne j\le m\), then the assertion holds similarly.     

Standard Jordan partitions with three parameters

We extend previous work on standard two-parameter Jordan partitions by Barry (Commun Algebra 43:4231–4246, 2015) to three parameters. Let \(J_r\) denote an \(r \times r\) matrix with minimal polynomial \((t-1)^r\) over a field F of characteristic p. For positive integers \(n_1\), \(n_2\), and \(n_3\) satisfying \(n_1 \le n_2 \le n_3\), the Jordan canonical form of the \(n_1 n_2 n_3 \times n_1 n_2 n_3\) matrix \(J_{n_1} \otimes J_{n_2} \otimes J_{n_3}\) has the form \(J_{\lambda _1} \oplus J_{\lambda _2} \oplus \cdots \oplus J_{\lambda _m}\) where \(\lambda _1 \ge \lambda _2 \ge \cdots \ge \lambda _m>0\) and \(\sum _{i=1}^m \lambda _i=n_1 n_2 n_3\). The partition \(\lambda (n_1,n_2,n_3:p)=(\lambda _1, \lambda _2,\ldots , \lambda _m)\) of \(n_1 n_2 n_3\), which depends on \(n_1\), \(n_2\), \(n_3\), and p, will be called a Jordan partition. We will define what we mean by a standard Jordan partition and give necessary and sufficient conditions for its existence.     

On <Emphasis Type="Italic">g</Emphasis>-functions for countable state subshifts

For a very ample line bundle L on a smooth projective algebraic curve C, we prove that, under some circumstances on positive integers \(\gamma , d\), if one had \(\dim V^{d-1}_{d}(L)=d-1-\gamma \), then the scheme \(V^{\gamma +2}_{\gamma +3}(L)\), if non-empty, would be 2-dimensional. Furthermore, for a 2-very ample line bundle L on C and an integer d, \(4\le d\le h^0(L)-2\), it will be proved that the dimension of the scheme \( V^{d-1}_{d}(L)\) cannot attain its maximum value, i.e. \(d-2\). This will be used to prove irreduciblity of the highest secant loci of L, namely \(V^{h^0(L)-2}_{h^0(L)-1}(L)\). Then we discuss on the existence of very ample line bundles having reducible highest secant loci on k-gonal curves. Extending a well-known result of Montserrat Teixidor to secant loci, our results answer a question proposed and left unanswered recently by Marian Aprodu and Edoardo Sernesi.     

Heinz mean curvature estimates in warped product spaces $$M\times _{e^{\psi }}N$$

If a graph submanifold (x, f(x)) of a Riemannian warped product space \((M^m\times _{e^{\psi }}N^n,\tilde{g}=g+ e^{2\psi }h)\) is immersed with parallel mean curvature H, then we obtain a Heinz-type estimation of the mean curvature. Namely, on each compact domain D of M, \(m\Vert H\Vert \le \frac{A_{\psi }(\partial D)}{V_{\psi }(D)}\) holds, where \(A_{\psi }(\partial D)\) and \(V_{\psi }(D)\) are the \({\psi }\)-weighted area and volume, respectively. In particular, \(H=0\) if (M, g) has zero-weighted Cheeger constant, a concept recently introduced by Impera et al. (Height estimates for killing graphs. arXiv:1612.01257, 2016). This generalizes the known cases \(n=1\) or \(\psi =0\). We also conclude minimality using a closed calibration, assuming \((M,g_*)\) is complete where \(g_*=g+e^{2\psi }f^*h\), and for some constants \(\alpha \ge \delta \ge 0\), \(C_1>0\) and \(\beta \in [0,1)\), \(\Vert \nabla ^*\psi \Vert ^2_{g_*}\le \delta \), \(\mathrm {Ricci}_{\psi ,g_*}\ge \alpha \), and \({\mathrm{det}}_g(g_*)\le C_1 r^{2\beta }\) holds when \(r\rightarrow +\infty \), where r(x) is the distance function on \((M,g_*)\) from some fixed point. Both results rely on expressing the squared norm of the mean curvature as a weighted divergence of a suitable vector field.     

Couplings of Brownian Motions of Deterministic Distance in Model Spaces of Constant Curvature

We consider the model space \(\mathbb {M}^{n}_{K}\) of constant curvature K and dimension \(n\ge 1\) (Euclidean space for \(K=0\), sphere for \(K>0\) and hyperbolic space for \(K<0\)), and we show that given a function \(\rho :[0,\infty )\rightarrow [0, \infty )\) with \(\rho (0)=\mathrm {dist}(x,y)\) there exists a coadapted coupling (X(t), Y(t)) of Brownian motions on \(\mathbb {M}^{n}_{K}\) starting at (x, y) such that \(\rho (t)=\mathrm {dist}(X(t),Y(t))\) for every \(t\ge 0\) if and only if \(\rho \) is continuous and satisfies for almost every \(t\ge 0\) the differential inequality

$$\begin{aligned} -(n-1)\sqrt{K}\tan \left( \tfrac{\sqrt{K}\rho (t)}{2}\right) \le \rho '(t)\le -(n-1)\sqrt{K}\tan \left( \tfrac{\sqrt{K}\rho (t)}{2}\right) +\tfrac{2(n-1)\sqrt{K}}{\sin (\sqrt{K}\rho (t))}. \end{aligned}$$

In other words, we characterize all coadapted couplings of Brownian motions on the model space \(\mathbb {M}^{n}_{K}\) for which the distance between the processes is deterministic. In addition, the construction of the coupling is explicit for every choice of \(\rho \) satisfying the above hypotheses.

     

On the Dual Form of ‘Low <Emphasis Type="Italic">M</Emphasis><Superscript>*</Superscript> Estimate’ in the Quasi-convex Case

Let\(B_{2}^{n}\) denote the Euclidean ball in\({\mathbb R}^n\), and, given closed star-shaped body\(K \subset {\mathbb R}^{n}, M_{K}\) denote the average of the gauge of K on the Euclidean sphere. Let\(p \in (0,1)\) and let\(K \subset {\mathbb R}^{n}\) be a p-convex body. In [17] we proved that for every\(\lambda \in (0,1)\) there exists an orthogonal projection P of rank\((1 - \lambda)n\) such that

$\frac{f(\lambda)}{M_K} PB^{n}_{2} \subset PK,$

where\(f(\lambda)=c_p\lambda^{1+1/p}\) for some positive constant c _p depending on p only. In this note we prove that\(f(\lambda)\) can be taken equal to\(C_p\lambda^{1/p-1/2}\). In terms of Kolmogorov numbers it means that for every\(k \leq n\)

$d_k (\hbox{Id}:\ell^{n}_{2} \to ({\mathbb R}^{n},\|\cdot\|_{K})) \leq C_p \frac{n^{1/p-1}}{k^{1/p-1/2}} \ell(\hbox{ID}: \ell^{n}_{2} \to ({\mathbb R}^{n}, \|\cdot\|_{K})),$

where\(\ell(\hbox{Id})={\bf E}\|\sum\limits^{n}_{i=1}g_i e_i\|_K\) for the independent standard Gaussian random variables\(\{g_i\}\) and the canonical basis\(\{e_i\}\) of\({\mathbb R}^n\). All results do not require the symmetry of K.

     

On the 2-adic valuation of the cardinality of elliptic curves over finite extensions of $$\mathbb {F}_{\varvec{q}} $$

In this paper we study the difference between the 2-adic valuations of the cardinalities \( \# E( \mathbb {F}_{q^k} ) \) and \( \# E( \mathbb {F}_q ) \) of an elliptic curve E over \( \mathbb {F}_q \). We also deduce information about the structure of the 2-Sylow subgroup \( E[ 2^\infty ]( \mathbb {F}_{q^k} ) \) from the exponents of \( E[ 2^\infty ]( \mathbb {F}_q ) \).     

Group divisible designs with large block sizes

For positive integers n, k with \(3\le k\le n\), let \(X=\mathbb {F}_{2^n}\setminus \{0,1\}\), \({\mathcal {G}}=\{\{x,x+1\}:x\in X\}\), and \({\mathcal {B}}_k=\left\{ \{x_1,x_2,\ldots ,x_k\}\!\subset \!X:\sum \limits _{i=1}^kx_i=1,\ \sum \limits _{i\in I}x_i\!\ne \!1\ \mathrm{for\ any}\ \emptyset \!\ne \!I\!\subsetneqq \!\{1,2,\ldots ,k\}\right\} \). Lee et al. used the inclusion–exclusion principle to show that the triple \((X,{\mathcal {G}},{\mathcal {B}}_k)\) is a \((k,\lambda _k)\)-GDD of type \(2^{2^{n-1}-1}\) for \(k\in \{3,4,5,6,7\}\) where \(\lambda _k=\frac{\prod _{i=3}^{k-1}(2^n-2^i)}{(k-2)!}\) (Lee et al. in Des Codes Cryptogr,  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10623-017-0395-8, 2017). They conjectured that \((X,{\mathcal {G}},{\mathcal {B}}_k)\) is also a \((k,\lambda _k)\)-GDD of type \(2^{2^{n-1}-1}\) for any integer \(k\ge 8\). In this paper, we use a similar construction and counting principles to show that there is a \((k,\lambda _k)\)-GDD of type \((q^2-q)^{(q^{n-1}-1)/(q-1)}\) for any prime power q and any integers k, n with \(3\le k\le n\) where \(\lambda _k=\frac{\prod _{i=3}^{k-1}(q^n-q^i)}{(k-2)!}\). Consequently, their conjecture holds. Such a method is also generalized to yield a \((k,\lambda _k)\)-GDD of type \((q^{\ell +1}-q^{\ell })^{(q^{n-\ell }-1)/(q-1)}\) where \(\lambda _k=\frac{\prod _{i=3}^{k-1}(q^n-q^{\ell +i-1})}{(k-2)!}\) and \(k+\ell \le n+1\).     

Subgroups of cyclic groups and values of the Riemann zeta function

Let k be a positive integer, x a large real number, and let \(C_n\) be the cyclic group of order n. For \(k\le n\le x\) we determine the mean average order of the subgroups of \(C_n\) generated by k distinct elements and we give asymptotic results of related averaging functions of the orders of subgroups of cyclic groups. The average order is expressed in terms of Jordan’s totient functions and Stirling numbers of the second kind. We have the following consequence. Let k and x be as above. For \(k\le n\le x\), the mean average proportion of \(C_n\) generated by k distinct elements approaches \(\zeta (k+2)/\zeta (k+1)\) as x grows, where \(\zeta (s)\) is the Riemann zeta function.     

Counting polynomial subset sums

Let D be a subset of a finite commutative ring R with identity. Let \(f(x)\in R[x]\) be a polynomial of degree d. For a nonnegative integer k, we study the number \(N_f(D,k,b)\) of k-subsets S in D such that

$$\begin{aligned} \sum _{x\in S} f(x)=b. \end{aligned}$$

In this paper, we establish several bounds for the difference between \(N_f(D,k, b)\) and the expected main term \(\frac{1}{|R|}{|D|\atopwithdelims ()k}\), depending on the nature of the finite ring R and f. For \(R=\mathbb {Z}_n\), let \(p=p(n)\) be the smallest prime divisor of n, \(|D|=n-c \ge C_dn p^{-\frac{1}{d}}\,+\,c\) and \(f(x)=a_dx^d +\cdots +a_0\in \mathbb {Z}[x]\) with \((a_d, \ldots , a_1, n)=1\). Then

$$\begin{aligned} \left| N_f(D, k, b)-\frac{1}{n}{n-c \atopwithdelims ()k}\right| \le {\delta (n)(n-c)+(1-\delta (n))\left( C_dnp^{-\frac{1}{d}}+c\right) +k-1\atopwithdelims ()k}, \end{aligned}$$

answering an open question raised by Stanley (Enumerative combinatorics, 1997) in a general setting, where \(\delta (n)=\sum _{i\mid n, \mu (i)=-1}\frac{1}{i}\) and \(C_d=e^{1.85d}\). Furthermore, if n is a prime power, then \(\delta (n) =1/p\) and one can take \(C_d=4.41\). Similar and stronger bounds are given for two more cases. The first one is when \(R=\mathbb {F}_q\), a q-element finite field of characteristic p and f(x) is general. The second one is essentially the well-known subset sum problem over an arbitrary finite abelian group. These bounds extend several previous results.