Correlated equilibria in some classes of two-person games

A correlated equilibrium in a two-person game is “good” if for everyNash equilibrium there is a player who prefers the correlated equilibrium to theNash equilibrium. If a game is “best-response equivalent” to a two-person zero-sum game, then it has no good correlated equilibria. But games which are “almost strictly competitive” or “order equivalent” to a two-person zero-sum game may have good correlated equilibria.     

An operator not satisfying Lomonosov's hypothesis

An example is presented of a Hilbert space operator such that no non-scalar operator that commutes with it commutes with a non-zero compact operator. This shows that Lomonosov's invariant subspace theorem does not apply to every operator.     

Optimal mass production

It is often desirable to perform a “sensitivity analysis” by perturbing the data given with a problem. Motivated by serial and nonserial dynamic programming, we define a variety of sensitivity analysis problems, produce algorithms, and obtain lower bound results.     

The ℒ p spaces

The ℒ _p spaces which were introduced by A. Pełczyński and the first named author are studied. It is proved, e.g., that (i)X is an ℒ _p space if and only ifX* is and ℒ _q space (p ⁻¹+q ⁻¹=1). (ii) A complemented subspace of an ℒ _p space is either an ℒ _p or an ℒ₂ space. (iii) The ℒ _p spaces have sufficiently many Boolean algebras of projections. These results are applied to show thatX is an ℒ_∞ (resp. ℒ₁) space if and only ifX admits extensions (resp. liftings) of compact operators havingX as a domain or range space. We also prove a theorem on the “local reflexivity” of an arbitrary Banach space. This research was partially supported by NSF Grant# 8964.     

Electron transfer driven by proton fluctuations in a hydrogen-bonded donor-acceptor assembly

The temperature-isotope dependence of proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) for a noncovalent molecular dyad is reported. The system consists of an excited-state Zn(II) porphyrin that transfers an electron to a naphthalene diimide acceptor through an amidinium-carboxylate interface. Two different isotope effects are observed for variant temperature regimes. A reverse isotope effect (i.e., kH/kD < 1) is observed as T approaches 120 K (kH/kD = 0.9, 120 K), whereas a normal isotope effect (i.e., kH/kD > 1) is recovered as the temperature is increased (kH/kD = 1.2, 300 K). The transition between these limits is smooth, with a crossover temperature of T approximately 160 K. These observations are in accordance with charge-transfer dynamics that are susceptible to bath-induced fluctuations in the proton coordinate.     

Modeling Stochastic Dominance as Infinite-Dimensional Constraint Systems via the Strassen Theorem

We use the Strassen theorem to solve stochastic optimization problems with stochastic dominance constraints. First, we show that a dominance-constrained problem on general probability spaces can be expressed as an infinite-dimensional optimization problem with a convenient representation of the dominance constraints provided by the Strassen theorem. This result generalizes earlier work which was limited to finite probability spaces. Second, we derive optimality conditions and a duality theory to gain insight into this optimization problem. Finally, we present a computational scheme for constructing finite approximations along with a convergence rate analysis on the approximation quality.