Comparison theorems for weak splittings of bounded operators

Summary Comparison theorems for weak splittings of bounded operators are presented. These theorems extend the classical comparison theorem for regular splittings of matrices by Varga, the less known result by Wonicki, and the recent results for regular and weak regular splittings of matrices by Neumann and Plemmons, Elsner, and Lanzkron, Rose and Szyld. The hypotheses of the theorems presented here are weaker and the theorems hold for general Banach spaces and rather general cones. Hypotheses are given which provide strict inequalities for the comparisons. It is also shown that the comparison theorem by Alefeld and Volkmann applies exclusively to monotone sequences of iterates and is not equivalent to the comparison of the spectral radius of the iteration operators.This work was supported by the National Science Foundation grants DMS-8807338 and INT-8918502     

First passage percolation: The stationary case

Summary If the passage time of the edges of the ^d lattice are stationary, ergodic and have finite moment of orderp>d, then a.s. the set of vertices that can be reached within timet, has an asymptotic shape ast.     

Multiple ergodic theorems

Given measure preserving transformationsT ₁,T ₂,...,T _s of a probability space (X,B, μ) we are interested in the asymptotic behaviour of ergodic averages of the form $$\frac{1}{N}\sum\limits_{n = 0}^{N - 1} {T_1^n f_1 \cdot T_2^n f_2 } \cdot \cdots \cdot T_s^n f_s $$ wheref ₁,f ₂,...,f _s ?L ^∞(X,B,μ). In the general case we study, mainly for commuting transformations, conditions under which the limit of (1) inL ²-norm is ∫ _x f ₁ dμ·∫ _x f ₂ dμ...∫ _x f _s dμ for anyf ₁,f ₂...,f _s ?L ^∞(X,B,μ). If the transformations are commuting epimorphisms of a compact abelian group, then this limit exists almost everywhere. A few results are also obtained for some classes of non-commuting epimorphisms of compact abelian groups, and for commuting epimorphisms of arbitrary compact groups.     

ℤ/k-manifolds and families of Dirac operators

Summary The index of a family of a family of Dirac operators is aK-Theory element in the parameter space. Sullivan's/k-manifolds are used to detect this index completely. For the first Chern class this gives a topological interpretation of Witten's global anomaly. The relationship with the geometry of the index bundle is considered.To my teacher Isadore M. SingerThe author is partially supported by an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship     

Correlation length bounds for disordered Ising ferromagnets

Thed-dimensional, nearest-neighbor disordered Ising ferromagnet: $$H = - \sum {J_{ij} \sigma _i \sigma _j }$$ is studied as a function of both temperature,T, and a disorder parameter,λ, which measures the size of fluctuations of couplingsJ _ij ≧0. A finite-size scaling correlation length,ζ _f (T, λ), is defined in terms of the magnetic response of finite samples. This correlation length is shown to be equivalent, in the scaling sense, to the quenched average correlation lengthζ(T, λ), defined as the asymptotic decay rate of the quenched average two-point function. Furthermore, the magnetic response criterion which definesζ _f is shown to have a scale-invariant property at the critical point. The above results enable us to prove that the quenched correlation length satisfies: $$C\left| {\log \xi (T)} \right|\xi (T) \geqq \left| {T - T_c } \right|^{ - {2 \mathord{\left/ {\vphantom {2 d}} \right. \kern-\nulldelimiterspace} d}}$$ which implies the boundv≧2/d for the quenched correlation length exponent.