We study the densities of uniform random walks in the plane. A special focus is on the case of short walks with three or four steps and less completely those with five steps. As one of the main results, we obtain a hypergeometric representation of the density for four steps, which complements the classical elliptic representation in the case of three steps. It appears unrealistic to expect similar results for more than five steps. New results are also presented concerning the moments of uniform random walks and, in particular, their derivatives. Relations with Mahler measures are discussed.

We consider the problem of constructing Poisson brackets on smooth manifolds $M$ with prescribed Casimir functions. If $M$ is of even dimension, we achieve our construction by considering a suitable almost symplectic structure on $M$, while, in the case where $M$ is of odd dimension, our objective is achieved by using a convenient almost cosymplectic structure. Several examples and applications are presented.

In this article, we show to which extent one can improve a theorem of Bombieri, Friedlander and Iwaniec by using Hooley's variant of the divisor switching technique. We also give an application of the theorem in question, which is a Bombieri-Vinogradov type theorem for the Tichmarsh divisor problem in arithmetic progressions.

In this paper we study the extension problem, the averaging problem, and the generalized Erdős-Falconer distance problem associated with arbitrary homogeneous varieties in three dimensional vector spaces over finite fields. In the case when the varieties do not contain any plane passing through the origin, we obtain the best possible results on the aforementioned three problems. In particular, our result on the extension problem modestly generalizes the result by Mockenhaupt and Tao who studied the particular conical extension problem. In addition, investigating the Fourier decay on homogeneous varieties enables us to give complete mapping properties of averaging operators. Moreover, we improve the size condition on a set such that the cardinality of its distance set is nontrivial.

A body moves in a rarefied medium composed of point particles at rest. The particles make elastic reflections when colliding with the body surface, and do not interact with each other. We consider a generalization of Newton's minimal resistance problem: given two bounded convex bodies $C_1$ and $C_2$ such that $C_1 \subset C_2 \subset \mathbb{R}^3$ and $\partial C_1 \cap \partial C_2 = \emptyset$, minimize the resistance in the class of connected bodies $B$ such that $C_1 \subset B \subset C_2$. We prove that the infimum of resistance is zero; that is, there exist "almost perfectly streamlined" bodies.

We consider the stochastic difference equation $$\eta _k = \xi _k \phi (\eta _{k-1}), \quad k \in \mathbb Z $$ on a locally compact group $G$ where $\phi$ is an automorphism of $G$, $\xi _k$ are given $G$-valued random variables and $\eta _k$ are unknown $G$-valued random variables. This equation was considered by Tsirelson and Yor on one-dimensional torus. We consider the case when $\xi _k$ have a common law $\mu$ and prove that if $G$ is a distal group and $\phi$ is a distal automorphism of $G$ and if the equation has a solution, then extremal solutions of the equation are in one-one correspondence with points on the coset space $K\backslash G$ for some compact subgroup $K$ of $G$ such that $\mu$ is supported on $Kz= z\phi (K)$ for any $z$ in the support of $\mu$. We also provide a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of solutions to the equation.

In this paper we first generalize to the case of partial flags a result proved both by Spaltenstein and by Steinberg that relates the relative position of two complete flags and the irreducible components of the flag variety in which they lie, using the Robinson-Schensted-Knuth correspondence. Then we use this result to generalize the mirabolic Robinson-Schensted-Knuth correspondence defined by Travkin, to the case of two partial flags and a line.

Darmon cycles are a higher weight analogue of Stark--Heegner points. They yield local cohomology classes in the Deligne representation associated with a cuspidal form on $\Gamma _{0}( N) $ of even weight $k_{0}\geq 2$. They are conjectured to be the restriction of global cohomology classes in the Bloch--Kato Selmer group defined over narrow ring class fields attached to a real quadratic field. We show that suitable linear combinations of them obtained by genus characters satisfy these conjectures. We also prove $p$-adic Gross--Zagier type formulas, relating the derivatives of $p$-adic $L$-functions of the weight variable attached to imaginary (resp. real) quadratic fields to Heegner cycles (resp. Darmon cycles). Finally we express the second derivative of the Mazur--Kitagawa $p$-adic $L$-function of the weight variable in terms of a global cycle defined over a quadratic extension of $\mathbb{Q}$.

Extending the work of Larson and Todorcevic, we show there is a model of set theory in which normal spaces are collectionwise Hausdorff if they are either first countable or locally compact, and yet there are no first countable $L$-spaces or compact $S$-spaces. The model is one of the form PFA$(S)[S]$, where $S$ is a coherent Souslin tree.