On fillable contact structures up to homotopy

Let be a closed, oriented -manifold. The set of homotopy classes of positive, fillable contact structures on is a subtle invariant of , known to always be a finite set. In this paper we study under the assumption that carries metrics with positive scalar curvature. Using Seiberg-Witten gauge theory, we prove that two positive, fillable contact structures on are homotopic if and only if they are homotopic on the complement of a point. This implies that the cardinality of is bounded above by the order of the torsion subgroup of . Using explicit examples we show that without the geometric assumption on such a bound can be arbitrarily far from holding.

     

A Note on Shiffman's Theorems

Shiffman proved his famous first theorem, that if A R³ is a compact minimal annulus bounded by two convex Jordan curves in parallel (say horizontal) planes, then A is foliated by strictly convex horizontal Jordan curves. In this article we use Perron's method to construct minimal annuli which have a planar end and are bounded by two convex Jordan curves in horizontal planes, but the horizontal level sets of the surfaces are not all convex Jordan curves or straight lines. These surfaces show that unlike his second and third theorems, Shiffman's first theorem is not generalizable without further qualification.     

EQUIFOCAL HYPERSURFACES IN SYMMETRIC SPACES EQUIFOCAL HYPERSURFACES IN SYMMETRIC SPACES

1. IntroductionBy [111, a hypersurface in a symmetric space is called equifocal if every normal geodesicperpendiculajr to it is closed of constant length, say l, and contains Zg focal points for somepositive integer g. This is a natural generalization of isoparametric hypersurfaces in sphereswhere the illteger g is the number of distinct principal curvatures. In this note we considerequifocal hypersurfaces in simply connected rank one symmetric spaces, i.e. the complexprojective space CP", th…     

Large volume growth and finite topological type

It is shown in this paper that a complete noncompact -dimensional Riemannian manifold with nonnegative Ricci curvature, sectional curvature bounded from below, and large volume growth is of finite topological type provided that the volume growth rate of the complement of the cone of rays from a fixed base point is less than .

     

Sectional bodies associated with a convex body

We define the sectional bodies associated to a convex body in and two related measures of symmetry. These definitions extend those of Grünbaum (1963). As Grünbaum conjectured, we prove that the simplices are the most dissymmetrical convex bodies with respect to these measures. In the case when the convex body has a sufficiently smooth boundary, we investigate some limit behaviours of the volume of the sectional bodies.

     

Propagation of laser beams and caustics in crystals

We investigated the propagation and transformation of laser beams and the formation of caustics in particular directions, including optical axes of crystals. We found a direct connection between the particular directions and the curvature of wave surfaces that is determined by the symmetry and optical properties of the crystals. We demonstrated that caustics in particular directions are characterized by a degree of the curvature degeneracy and are described by particular solutions of the corresponding nonlinear equations. __________ Translated from Zhurnal Prikladnoi Spektroskopii, Vol. 74, No. 4, pp. 491–498, July–August, 2007.     

Efficient generation of a photon pair in a bulk periodically poled potassium titanyl phosphate

In this report, we demonstrate the efficient generation of collinearly propagating photon pairs in a bulk periodically poled potassium titanyl phosphate pumped by a cw laser. The detected coincidence counts are more than 7400/s with 3.58 mW pump power in a Hanbury-Brown-Twiss-type experiment. The estimated photon pair production rate is about 0.73 MHz/mW. This is very promising for some applications, such as quantum key distribution, proof of the Bell-inequality, preparation of single photon states in broadband wave packets, Franson-type interference and so on.     

Dilatation Transformation on Curvilinear Reaction Path

We present a dilatation transformation anlysis on curvilinear reaction path, andanalyze the curvature effect of complex scaling on the prediction of molecular reaction thresholdresonance. An example of numerical calculation was carried out for the prediction of thresholdresonance of H + H₂ molecular scattering with and without consideration of the reactionpath curvature. We found, in the studied system, that the curvature provides a correction tothreshold resonance lifetime as large as 25%.     

A logarithmic Gauss curvature flow and the Minkowski problem

Let X₀ be a smooth uniformly convex hypersurface and f a postive smooth function in Sⁿ. We study the motion of convex hypersurfaces X(·,t) with initial X(·,0)=θX₀ along its inner normal at a rate equal to log(K/f) where K is the Gauss curvature of X(·,t). We show that the hypersurfaces remain smooth and uniformly convex, and there exists θ^*>0 such that if θ<θ^*, they shrink to a point in finite time and, if θ>θ^*, they expand to an asymptotic sphere. Finally, when θ=θ^*, they converge to a convex hypersurface of which Gauss curvature is given explicitly by a function depending on f(x).     

Submanifolds of positive Ricci curvature in a Euclidean space

In this paper we study the role of constant vector fields on a Euclidean space R ^n+p in shaping the geometry of its compact submanifolds. For an n-dimensional compact submanifold M of the Euclidean space R ^n+p with mean curvature vector field H and a constant vector field on R ^n+p , the smooth function is used to obtain a characterization of sphere among compact submanifolds of positive Ricci curvature (cf. main Theorem).