A new degree bound for vector invariants of symmetric groups

Let be a commutative ring, a finitely generated free -module and a finite group acting naturally on the graded symmetric algebra . Let denote the minimal number , such that the ring of invariants can be generated by finitely many elements of degree at most .

For and , the -fold direct sum of the natural permutation module, one knows that , provided that is invertible in . This was used by E. Noether to prove if .

In this paper we prove for arbitrary commutative rings and show equality for a prime power and or any ring with . Our results imply

for any ring with .

     

The trace of jet space

The classical Whitney extension theorem describes the trace of the space of -jets generated by functions from to an arbitrary closed subset . It establishes existence of a bounded linear extension operator as well. In this paper we investigate a similar problem for the space of functions whose higher derivatives satisfy the Zygmund condition with majorant . The main result states that the vector function belongs to the corresponding trace space if the trace to every subset of cardinality , where , can be extended to a function and . The number generally speaking cannot be reduced. The Whitney theorem can be reformulated in this way as well, but with a two-pointed subset . The approach is based on the theory of local polynomial approximations and a result on Lipschitz selections of multivalued mappings.

     

Comultiplications on free groups and wedges of circles

By means of the fundamental group functor, a co-H-space structure or a co-H-group structure on a wedge of circles is seen to be equivalent to a comultiplication or a cogroup structure on a free group . We consider individual comultiplications on and their properties such as associativity, coloop structure, existence of inverses, etc. as well as the set of all comultiplications of . For a comultiplication of we define a subset of quasi-diagonal elements which is basic to our investigation of associativity. The subset can be determined algorithmically and contains the set of diagonal elements . We show that is a basis for the largest subgroup of on which is associative and that is a free factor of . We also give necessary and sufficient conditions for a comultiplication on to be a coloop in terms of the Fox derivatives of with respect to a basis of . In addition, we consider inverses of a comultiplication, the collection of cohomomorphisms between two free groups with comultiplication and the action of the group on the set of comultiplications of . We give many examples to illustrate these notions. We conclude by translating these results from comultiplications on free groups to co-H-space structures on wedges of circles.

     

-unisolvent sets and flat incidence structures

For the past forty years or so topological incidence geometers and mathematicians interested in interpolation have been studying very similar objects. Nevertheless no communication between these two groups of mathematicians seems to have taken place during that time. The main goal of this paper is to draw attention to this fact and to demonstrate that by combining results from both areas it is possible to gain many new insights about the fundamentals of both areas. In particular, we establish the existence of nested orthogonal arrays of strength , for short nested -OAs, that are natural generalizations of flat affine planes and flat Laguerre planes. These incidence structures have point sets that are ``flat' topological spaces like the Möbius strip, the cylinder, and strips of the form , where is an interval of . Their circles (or lines) are subsets of the point sets homeomorphic to the circle in the first two cases and homeomorphic to in the last case. Our orthogonal arrays of strength arise from -unisolvent sets of half-periodic functions, -unisolvent sets of periodic functions, and -unisolvent sets of functions , respectively.

Associated with every point of a nested -OA, , is a nested -OA-the derived -OA at the point . We discover that, in our examples that arise from -unisolvent sets of times differentiable functions that solve the Hermite interpolation problem, deriving in our geometrical sense coincides with deriving in the analytical sense.

     

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).

     

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.

     

Boundary slopes of punctured tori in 3-manifolds

Let be an irreducible 3-manifold with a torus boundary component , and suppose that are the boundary slopes on of essential punctured tori in , with their boundaries on . We show that the intersection number of and is at most . Moreover, apart from exactly four explicit manifolds , which contain pairs of essential punctured tori realizing and 6 respectively, we have . It follows immediately that if is atoroidal, while the manifolds obtained by - and -Dehn filling on are toroidal, then , and unless is one of the four examples mentioned above.

Let be the class of 3-manifolds such that is irreducible, atoroidal, and not a Seifert fibre space. By considering spheres, disks and annuli in addition to tori, we prove the following. Suppose that , where has a torus component , and . Let be slopes on such that . Then . The exterior of the Whitehead sister link shows that this bound is best possible.

     

Equivalence of norms on operator space tensor products of -algebras

The Haagerup norm on the tensor product of two -algebras and is shown to be Banach space equivalent to either the Banach space projective norm or the operator space projective norm if and only if either or is finite dimensional or and are infinite dimensional and subhomogeneous. The Banach space projective norm and the operator space projective norm are equivalent on if and only if or is subhomogeneous.

     

Singular limit of solutions of the porous medium equation with absorption

We prove that as the solutions of , , , , , , , converges in to the solution of the ODE , , where , , satisfies in for some function , , satisfying whenever for a.e. , for and for , where is a constant and is any measurable subset of .

     

A weak-type inequality for differentially subordinate harmonic functions

Assuming an extra condition, we decrease the constant in the sharp inequality of Burkholder for two harmonic functions and . That is, we prove the sharp weak-type inequality under the assumptions that , and the extra assumption that . Here is the harmonic measure with respect to and the constant is the one found by Davis to be the best constant in Kolmogorov's weak-type inequality for conjugate functions.

     

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.

     

On differential equations for Sobolev-type Laguerre polynomials

The Sobolev-type Laguerre polynomials are orthogonal with respect to the inner product

where , and . In 1990 the first and second author showed that in the case and the polynomials are eigenfunctions of a unique differential operator of the form

where are independent of . This differential operator is of order if is a nonnegative integer, and of infinite order otherwise. In this paper we construct all differential equations of the form

where the coefficients , and are independent of and the coefficients , and are independent of , satisfied by the Sobolev-type Laguerre polynomials . Further, we show that in the case and the polynomials are eigenfunctions of a linear differential operator, which is of order if is a nonnegative integer and of infinite order otherwise. Finally, we show that in the case and the polynomials are eigenfunctions of a linear differential operator, which is of order if is a nonnegative integer and of infinite order otherwise.

     

Minimizing the Laplacian of a function squared with prescribed values on interior boundaries- Theory of polysplines

In this paper we consider the minimization of the integral of the Laplacian of a real-valued function squared (and more general functionals) with prescribed values on some interior boundaries , with the integral taken over the domain D. We prove that the solution is a biharmonic function in except on the interior boundaries , and satisfies some matching conditions on . There is a close analogy with the one-dimensional cubic splines, which is the reason for calling the solution a polyspline of order 2, or biharmonic polyspline. Similarly, when the quadratic functional is the integral of a positive integer, then the solution is a polyharmonic function of order for , satisfying matching conditions on , and is called a polyspline of order . Uniqueness and existence for polysplines of order , provided that the interior boundaries are sufficiently smooth surfaces and , is proved. Three examples of data sets possessing symmetry are considered, in which the computation of polysplines is reduced to computation of one-dimensional splines.

     

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 .

     

A growth dichotomy for o-minimal expansions of ordered groups

Let be an o-minimal expansion of a divisible ordered abelian group with a distinguished positive element . Then the following dichotomy holds: Either there is a -definable binary operation such that is an ordered real closed field; or, for every definable function there exists a -definable with . This has some interesting consequences regarding groups definable in o-minimal structures. In particular, for an o-minimal structure there are, up to definable isomorphism, at most two continuous (with respect to the product topology induced by the order) -definable groups with underlying set .

     

The Stable Homotopy Types of Stunted Lens Spaces mod

Let be the mod stunted lens space . Let denote the exponent of in , and the number of integers satisfying , and . In this paper we complete the classification of the stable homotopy types of mod stunted lens spaces. The main result (Theorem 1.3 (i)) is that, under some appropriate conditions, and are stably equivalent iff , where or .

     

Values of Gaussian hypergeometric series

Let be prime and let be the finite field with elements. In this note we investigate the arithmetic properties of the Gaussian hypergeometric functions

where and respectively are the quadratic and trivial characters of For all but finitely many rational numbers there exist two elliptic curves and for which these values are expressed in terms of the trace of the Frobenius endomorphism. We obtain bounds and congruence properties for these values. We also show, using a theorem of Elkies, that there are infinitely many primes for which is zero; however if or , then the set of such primes has density zero. In contrast, if or , then there are only finitely many primes for which Greene and Stanton proved a conjecture of Evans on the value of a certain character sum which from this point of view follows from the fact that is an elliptic curve with complex multiplication. We completely classify all such CM curves and give their corresponding character sums in the sense of Evans using special Jacobsthal sums. As a consequence of this classification, we obtain new proofs of congruences for generalized Apéry numbers, as well as a few new ones, and we answer a question of Koike by evaluating over every

     

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.

     

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.