We study adjacency of equisingularity types of planar complex curve singularities in terms of their Enriques diagrams. The goal is, given two equisingularity types, to determine whether one of them is adjacent to the other. For linear adjacency a complete answer is obtained, whereas for arbitrary (analytic) adjacency a necessary condition and a sufficient condition are proved. We also obtain new examples of exceptional deformations, {\em i.e.,} singular curves of type $\mathcal{D}'$ that can be deformed to a curve of type $\mathcal{D}$ without $\mathcal{D}'$ being adjacent to $\mathcal{D}$.

We introduce and study several notions of amenability for unitary corepresentations and $*$-representations of algebraic quantum groups, which may be used to characterize amenability and co-amenability for such quantum groups. As a background for this study, we investigate the associated tensor C$^{*}$-categories.

Decompositions of spectral type are obtained for closed Hilbert space operators with empty resolvent set, but whose square has closure which is spectral. Krein space situations are also discussed.

An $n \times n$ matrix is said to be totally nonnegative if every minor of $A$ is nonnegative. In this paper we completely characterize all possible Jordan canonical forms of irreducible totally nonnegative matrices. Our approach is mostly combinatorial and is based on the study of weighted planar diagrams associated with totally nonnegative matrices.

We describe the structure of the space of second order elliptic differential operators on a homogenous bundle over a compact Lie group. Subject to a technical condition, these operators are homotopic to the Laplacian. The technical condition is further investigated, with examples given where it holds and others where it does not. Since many spectral invariants are also homotopy invariants, these results provide information about the invariants of these operators.

We study certain symplectic quotients of $n$-fold products of complex projective $m$-space by the unitary group acting diagonally. After studying nonemptiness and smoothness of these quotients we construct the action-angle variables, defined on an open dense subset, of an integrable Hamiltonian system. The semiclassical quantization of this system reporduces formulas from the representation theory of the unitary group.

In this paper, we construct a duality for $p$-adic orthogonal groups.

To every pair of algebraic number fields with isomorphic Witt rings one can associate a number, called the {\it minimum number of wild primes}. Earlier investigations have established lower bounds for this number. In this paper an analysis is presented that expresses the minimum number of wild primes in terms of the number of wild dyadic primes. This formula not only gives immediate upper bounds, but can be considered to be an exact formula for the minimum number of wild primes.

A duality formula is found for coalescing Brownian motions on the real line. It is shown that the joint distribution of a coalescing Brownian motion can be determined by another coalescing Brownian motion running backward. This duality is used to study a measure-valued process arising as the high density limit of the empirical measures of coalescing Brownian motions.

We study the gap (= ``projection norm'' = ``graph distance'') topology of the space of all (not necessarily bounded) self-adjoint Fredholm operators in a separable Hilbert space by the Cayley transform and direct methods. In particular, we show the surprising result that this space is connected in contrast to the bounded case. Moreover, we present a rigorous definition of spectral flow of a path of such operators (actually alternative but mutually equivalent definitions) and prove the homotopy invariance. As an example, we discuss operator curves on manifolds with boundary.

The present paper is concerned with the study of the $L^2$ cohomology spaces of negatively curved manifolds. The first half presents a finiteness and vanishing result obtained under some curvature assumptions, while the second half identifies a class of metrics having non-trivial $L^2$ cohomology for degree equal to the half dimension of the space. For the second part we rely on the existence and regularity properties of the solution for the heat equation for forms.

The initial version of the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture concerned asymptotics for partial Euler products for an elliptic curve $L$-function at $s = 1$. Goldfeld later proved that these asymptotics imply the Riemann hypothesis for the $L$-function and that the constant in the asymptotics has an unexpected factor of $\sqrt{2}$. We extend Goldfeld's theorem to an analysis of partial Euler products for a typical $L$-function along its critical line. The general $\sqrt{2}$ phenomenon is related to second moments, while the asymptotic behavior (over number fields) is proved to be equivalent to a condition that in a precise sense seems much deeper than the Riemann hypothesis. Over function fields, the Euler product asymptotics can sometimes be proved unconditionally.

We investigate exceptional sets in the Waring--Goldbach problem. For example, in the cubic case, we show that all but $O(N^{79/84+\epsilon})$ integers subject to the necessary local conditions can be represented as the sum of five cubes of primes. Furthermore, we develop a new device that leads easily to similar estimates for exceptional sets for sums of fourth and higher powers of primes.

Let \(E/\mathbb{Q}\) be an elliptic curve defined by the equation \(y^2=x^3 +ax +b\). For a prime \(p, \linebreak p \nmid\Delta =-16(4a^3+27b^2)\neq 0\), define \[ N_p = p+1 -a_p = |E(\mathbb{F}_p)|. \] As a precursor to their celebrated conjecture, Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer originally conjectured that for some constant $c$, \[ \prod_{p \leq x, p \nmid\Delta } \frac{N_p}{p} \sim c (\log x)^r, \quad x \to \infty. \] Let \(\alpha _p\) and \(\beta _p\) be the eigenvalues of the Frobenius at \(p\). Define \[ \tilde{c}_n = \begin{cases} \frac{\alpha_p^k + \beta_p^k}{k}& n =p^k, p \textrm{ is a prime, $k$ is a natural number, $p\nmid \Delta$} . \\ 0 & \text{otherwise}. \end{cases}. \] and \(\tilde{C}(x)= \sum_{n\leq x} \tilde{c}_n\). In this paper, we establish the equivalence between the conjecture and the condition \(\tilde{C}(x)=\mathbf{o}(x)\). The asymptotic condition is indeed much deeper than what we know so far or what we can know under the analogue of the Riemann hypothesis. In addition, we provide an oscillation theorem and an \(\Omega\) theorem which relate to the constant $c$ in the conjecture.

For a given elliptic curve $\E$, we obtain an upper bound on the discrepancy of sets of multiples $z_sG$ where $z_s$ runs through a sequence $\cZ=\(z_1, \dots, z_T\)$ such that $k z_1,\dots, kz_T $ is a permutation of $z_1, \dots, z_T$, both sequences taken modulo $t$, for sufficiently many distinct values of $k$ modulo $t$. We apply this result to studying an analogue of the power generator over an elliptic curve. These results are elliptic curve analogues of those obtained for multiplicative groups of finite fields and residue rings.

Let $A$ be an amenable separable $C^*$-algebra and $B$ be a non-unital but $\sigma$-unital simple $C^*$-algebra with continuous scale. We show that two essential extensions $\tau_1$ and $\tau_2$ of $A$ by $B$ are approximately unitarily equivalent if and only if $$ [\tau_1]=[\tau_2] \text{ in } KL(A, M(B)/B). $$ If $A$ is assumed to satisfy the Universal Coefficient Theorem, there is a bijection from approximate unitary equivalence classes of the above mentioned extensions to $KL(A, M(B)/B)$. Using $KL(A, M(B)/B)$, we compute exactly when an essential extension is quasidiagonal. We show that quasidiagonal extensions may not be approximately trivial. We also study the approximately trivial extensions.

In this paper, we find configurations of points in $n$-dimensional projective space ($\proj ^n$) which simultaneously generalize both $k$-configurations and reduced 0-dimensional complete intersections. Recall that $k$-configurations in $\proj ^2$ are disjoint unions of distinct points on lines and in $\proj ^n$ are inductively disjoint unions of $k$-configurations on hyperplanes, subject to certain conditions. Furthermore, the Hilbert function of a $k$-configuration is determined from those of the smaller $k$-configurations. We call our generalized constructions $k_D$-configurations, where $D=\{ d_1, \ldots ,d_r\}$ (a set of $r$ positive integers with repetition allowed) is the type of a given complete intersection in $\proj ^n$. We show that the Hilbert function of any $k_D$-configuration can be obtained from those of smaller $k_D$-configurations. We then provide applications of this result in two different directions, both of which are motivated by corresponding results about $k$-configurations.

We investigate the problem of whether every immersed flat plane in a nonpositively curved square complex is the limit of periodic flat planes. Using a branched cover, we reduce the problem to the case of $\V$-complexes. We solve the problem for malnormal and cyclonormal $\V$-complexes. We also solve the problem for complete square complexes using a different approach. We give an application towards deciding whether the elements of fundamental groups of the spaces we study have commuting powers. We note a connection between the flat approximation problem and subgroup separability.

Let $f= \sum_{n=1}^{\infty} a_f(n)q^n$ be a cusp form with integer weight $k \geq 2$ that is not a linear combination of forms with complex multiplication. For $n \geq 1$, let $$ i_f(n)=\begin{cases}\max\{ i : a_f(n+j)=0 \text{ for all } 0 \leq j \leq i\}&\text{if $a_f(n)=0$,}\\ 0&\text{otherwise}.\end{cases} $$ Concerning bounded values of $i_f(n)$ we prove that for $\epsilon >0$ there exists $M = M(\epsilon,f)$ such that $\# \{n \leq x : i_f(n) \leq M\} \geq (1 - \epsilon) x$. Using results of Wu, we show that if $f$ is a weight 2 cusp form for an elliptic curve without complex multiplication, then $i_f(n) \ll_{f, \epsilon} n^{\frac{51}{134} + \epsilon}$. Using a result of David and Pappalardi, we improve the exponent to $\frac{1}{3}$ for almost all newforms associated to elliptic curves without complex multiplication. Inspired by a classical paper of Selberg, we also investigate $i_f(n)$ on the average using well known bounds on the Riemann Zeta function.

In the paper we formulate a Covering Property Axiom, \psmP, which holds in the iterated perfect set model, and show that it implies the following facts, of which (a) and (b) are the generalizations of results of J. Stepr\={a}ns. \begin{compactenum}[\rm(a)~~] \item There exists a family $\F$ of less than continuum many $\C^1$ functions from $\real$ to $\real$ such that $\real^2$ is covered by functions from $\F$, in the sense that for every $\la x,y\ra\in\real^2$ there exists an $f\in\F$ such that either $f(x)=y$ or $f(y)=x$. \item For every Borel function $f\colon\real\to\real$ there exists a family $\F$ of less than continuum many ``$\C^1$'' functions ({\em i.e.,} differentiable functions with continuous derivatives, where derivative can be infinite) whose graphs cover the graph of $f$. \item For every $n>0$ and a $D^n$ function $f\colon\real\to\real$ there exists a family $\F$ of less than continuum many $\C^n$ functions whose graphs cover the graph of $f$. \end{compactenum} We also provide the examples showing that in the above properties the smoothness conditions are the best possible. Parts (b), (c), and the examples are closely related to work of A. Olevski\v{\i}.

With applications in mind we establish a summation formula for the coefficients of a general Dirichlet series satisfying a suitable functional equation. Among a number of consequences we derive a generalization of an elegant divisor sum bound due to F.~V. Atkinson.

Contractivity and hypercontractivity properties of semigroups are now well understood when the generator, $A$, is a Dirichlet form operator. It has been shown that in some holomorphic function spaces the semigroup operators, $e^{-tA}$, can be bounded {\it below} from $L^p$ to $L^q$ when $p,q$ and $t$ are suitably related. We will show that such lower boundedness occurs also in spaces of subharmonic functions.

In this paper we make explicit all $L$-functions in the Langlands--Shahidi method which appear as normalizing factors of global intertwining operators in the constant term of the Eisenstein series. We prove, in many cases, the conjecture of Shahidi regarding the holomorphy of the local $L$-functions. We also prove that the normalized local intertwining operators are holomorphic and non-vaninishing for $\re(s)\geq 1/2$ in many cases. These local results are essential in global applications such as Langlands functoriality, residual spectrum and determining poles of automorphic $L$-functions.

Differential operators $D_x$, $D_y$, and $D_z$ are formed using the action of the $3$-dimensional discrete Heisenberg group $G$ on a set $S$, and the operators will act on functions on $S$. The Laplacian operator $L=D_x^2 + D_y^2 + D_z^2$ is a difference operator with variable differences which can be associated to a unitary representation of $G$ on the Hilbert space $L^2(S)$. Using techniques from harmonic analysis and representation theory, we show that the Laplacian operator is locally solvable.

In this paper we describe reducibility of non-unitary generalized principal series for classical $p$-adic groups in terms of the classification of discrete series due to M\oe glin and Tadi\'c.

We explicitly describe the decomposition into irreducibles of the restriction of the principal series representations of $SL(2,k)$, for $k$ a $p$-adic field, to each of its two maximal compact subgroups (up to conjugacy). We identify these irreducible subrepresentations in the Kirillov-type classification of Shalika. We go on to explicitly describe the decomposition of the reducible principal series of $SL(2,k)$ in terms of the restrictions of its irreducible constituents to a maximal compact subgroup.

We study some questions concerning the structure of the set of spreading models of a separable infinite-dimensional Banach space $X$. In particular we give an example of a reflexive $X$ so that all spreading models of $X$ contain $\ell_1$ but none of them is isomorphic to $\ell_1$. We also prove that for any countable set $C$ of spreading models generated by weakly null sequences there is a spreading model generated by a weakly null sequence which dominates each element of $C$. In certain cases this ensures that $X$ admits, for each $\alpha < \omega_1$, a spreading model $(\tilde x_i^{(\alpha)})_i$ such that if $\alpha < \beta$ then $(\tilde x_i^{(\alpha)})_i$ is dominated by (and not equivalent to) $(\tilde x_i^{(\beta)})_i$. Some applications of these ideas are used to give sufficient conditions on a Banach space for the existence of a subspace and an operator defined on the subspace, which is not a compact perturbation of a multiple of the inclusion map.

We consider an asymptotically flat Lorentzian manifold of dimension $(1,3)$. An inequality is derived which bounds the Riemannian curvature tensor in terms of the ADM energy in the general case with second fundamental form. The inequality quantifies in which sense the Lorentzian manifold becomes flat in the limit when the ADM energy tends to zero.

In this article we prove some new results on projective normality, normal presentation and higher syzygies for surfaces of general type, not necessarily smooth, embedded by adjoint linear series. Some of the corollaries of more general results include: results on property $N_p$ associated to $K_S \otimes B^{\otimes n}$ where $B$ is base-point free and ample divisor with $B\otimes K^*$ {\it nef}, results for pluricanonical linear systems and results giving effective bounds for adjoint linear series associated to ample bundles. Examples in the last section show that the results are optimal.

We are interested in Poisson structures to transverse nilpotent adjoint orbits in a complex semi-simple Lie algebra, and we study their polynomial nature. Furthermore, in the case of $sl_n$, we construct some families of nilpotent orbits with quadratic transverse structures.

We study closed extensions $\underline A$ of an elliptic differential operator $A$ on a manifold with conical singularities, acting as an unbounded operator on a weighted $L_p$-space. Under suitable conditions we show that the resolvent $(\lambda-\underline A)^{-1}$ exists in a sector of the complex plane and decays like $1/|\lambda|$ as $|\lambda|\to\infty$. Moreover, we determine the structure of the resolvent with enough precision to guarantee existence and boundedness of imaginary powers of $\underline A$. As an application we treat the Laplace--Beltrami operator for a metric with straight conical degeneracy and describe domains yielding maximal regularity for the Cauchy problem $\dot{u}-\Delta u=f$, $u(0)=0$.

Let $E_{/\qq}$ be an elliptic curve with good ordinary reduction at a prime $p>2$. It has a well-defined Iwasawa $\mu$-invariant $\mu(E)_p$ which encodes part of the information about the growth of the Selmer group $\sel E{K_n}$ as $K_n$ ranges over the subfields of the cyclotomic $\zzp$-extension $K_\infty/\qq$. Ralph Greenberg has conjectured that any such $E$ is isogenous to a curve $E'$ with $\mu(E')_p=0$. In this paper we prove Greenberg's conjecture for infinitely many curves $E$ with a rational $p$-torsion point, $p=3$ or $5$, no two of our examples having isomorphic $p$-torsion. The core of our strategy is a partial explicit evaluation of the global duality pairing for finite flat group schemes over rings of integers.

Petrie polygons, especially as they arise in the study of regular polytopes and Coxeter groups, have been studied by geometers and group theorists since the early part of the twentieth century. An open question is the determination of which polyhedra possess Petrie polygons that are simple closed curves. The current work explores combinatorial structures in abstract polytopes, called Petrie schemes, that generalize the notion of a Petrie polygon. It is established that all of the regular convex polytopes and honeycombs in Euclidean spaces, as well as all of the Gr\"unbaum--Dress polyhedra, possess Petrie schemes that are not self-intersecting and thus have Petrie polygons that are simple closed curves. Partial results are obtained for several other classes of less symmetric polytopes.

In this paper, first, we will investigate the Dirichlet problem for one type of vortex equation, which generalizes the well-known Hermitian Einstein equation. Secondly, we will give existence results for solutions of these vortex equations over various complete noncompact K\"ahler manifolds.

Representation theorems are proved for Banach ideal spaces with the Fatou property which are built by the Calder{\'o}n--Lozanovski\u\i\ construction. Factorization theorems for operators in spaces more general than the Lebesgue $L^{p}$ spaces are investigated. It is natural to extend the Gagliardo theorem on the Schur test and the Rubio de~Francia theorem on factorization of the Muckenhoupt $A_{p}$ weights to reflexive Orlicz spaces. However, it turns out that for the scales far from $L^{p}$-spaces this is impossible. For the concrete integral operators it is shown that factorization theorems and the Schur test in some reflexive Orlicz spaces are not valid. Representation theorems for the Calder{\'o}n--Lozanovski\u\i\ construction are involved in the proofs.

We introduce some non-linear transformations from the set of Hausdorff moment sequences into itself; among them is the one defined by the formula: $T((a_n)_n)=1/(a_0+\dots +a_n)$. We give some examples of Hausdorff moment sequences arising from the transformations and provide the corresponding measures: one of these sequences is the reciprocal of the harmonic numbers $(1+1/2+\dots +1/(n+1))^{-1}$.

We provide a porosity-based approach to the differentiability and continuity of real-valued functions on separable Banach spaces, when the function is monotone with respect to an ordering induced by a convex cone $K$ with non-empty interior. We also show that the set of nowhere $K$-monotone functions has a $\sigma$-porous complement in the space of continuous functions endowed with the uniform metric.

We prove a symmetric imprimitivity theorem for commuting proper actions of locally compact groups $H$ and $K$ on a $C^*$-algebra.

We consider some deformations of $G_2$-structures on $7$-manifolds. We discover a canonical way to deform a $G_2$-structure by a vector field in which the associated metric gets ``twisted'' in some way by the vector cross product. We present a system of partial differential equations for an unknown vector field $w$ whose solution would yield a manifold with holonomy $G_2$. Similarly we consider analogous constructions for $\Spin(7)$-structures on $8$-manifolds. Some of the results carry over directly, while others do not because of the increased complexity of the $\Spin(7)$ case.

Let $\ell$ be a length function on a group $G$, and let $M_{\ell}$ denote the operator of pointwise multiplication by $\ell$ on $\bell^2(G)$. Following Connes, $M_{\ell}$ can be used as a ``Dirac'' operator for $C_r^*(G)$. It defines a Lipschitz seminorm on $C_r^*(G)$, which defines a metric on the state space of $C_r^*(G)$. We show that if $G$ is a hyperbolic group and if $\ell$ is a word-length function on $G$, then the topology from this metric coincides with the weak-$*$ topology (our definition of a ``compact quantum metric space''). We show that a convenient framework is that of filtered $C^*$-algebras which satisfy a suitable ``Haagerup-type'' condition. We also use this framework to prove an analogous fact for certain reduced free products of $C^*$-algebras.

The original Gelfond--Schnirelman method, proposed in 1936, uses polynomials with integer coefficients and small norms on $[0,1]$ to give a Chebyshev-type lower bound in prime number theory. We study a generalization of this method for polynomials in many variables. Our main result is a lower bound for the integral of Chebyshev's $\psi$-function, expressed in terms of the weighted capacity. This extends previous work of Nair and Chudnovsky, and connects the subject to the potential theory with external fields generated by polynomial-type weights. We also solve the corresponding potential theoretic problem, by finding the extremal measure and its support.

Let $\rho \colon G_{\Q} \to \GL_{n}(\Ql)$ be a motivic $\ell$-adic Galois representation. For fixed $m > 1$ we initiate an investigation of the density of the set of primes $p$ such that the trace of the image of an arithmetic Frobenius at $p$ under $\rho$ is an $m$-th power residue modulo $p$. Based on numerical investigations with modular forms we conjecture (with Ramakrishna) that this density equals $1/m$ whenever the image of $\rho$ is open. We further conjecture that for such $\rho$ the set of these primes $p$ is independent of any set defined by Cebatorev-style Galois-theoretic conditions (in an appropriate sense). We then compute these densities for certain $m$ in the complementary case of modular forms of CM-type with rational Fourier coefficients; our proofs are a combination of the Cebatorev density theorem (which does apply in the CM case) and reciprocity laws applied to Hecke characters. We also discuss a potential application (suggested by Ramakrishna) to computing inertial degrees at $p$ in abelian extensions of imaginary quadratic fields unramified away from $p$.

We study Tychonoff spaces $X$ with the property that, for all topological embeddings $X\to Y $, the induced map $C(Y) \to C(X)$ is an epimorphism of rings. Such spaces are called \good. The simplest examples of \good spaces are $\sigma$-compact locally compact spaces and \Lin $P$-spaces. We show that \good first countable spaces must be locally compact. However, a ``bad'' class of \good spaces is exhibited whose pathology settles, in the negative, a number of open questions. Spaces which are not \good abound, and some are presented.

We prove that it is relatively consistent with $\ZFC$ that in any perfect Polish space, for every nonmeager set $A$ there exists a nowhere dense Cantor set $C$ such that $A\cap C$ is nonmeager in $C$. We also examine variants of this result and establish a measure theoretic analog.

Let $E$ be an elliptic curve defined over $\Q$ and without complex multiplication. Let $K$ be a fixed imaginary quadratic field. We find nontrivial upper bounds for the number of ordinary primes $p \leq x$ for which $\Q(\pi_p) = K$, where $\pi_p$ denotes the Frobenius endomorphism of $E$ at $p$. More precisely, under a generalized Riemann hypothesis we show that this number is $O_{E}(x^{\slfrac{17}{18}}\log x)$, and unconditionally we show that this number is $O_{E, K}\bigl(\frac{x(\log \log x)^{\slfrac{13}{12}}} {(\log x)^{\slfrac{25}{24}}}\bigr)$. We also prove that the number of imaginary quadratic fields $K$, with $-\disc K \leq x$ and of the form $K = \Q(\pi_p)$, is $\gg_E\log\log\log x$ for $x\geq x_0(E)$. These results represent progress towards a 1976 Lang--Trotter conjecture.

Let $k$ be a field of characteristic 0, $R=k[x_1, \ldots, x_d]$ be a polynomial ring, and $\mm$ its maximal homogeneous ideal. Let $I \subset R$ be a homogeneous ideal in $R$. Let $\lambda(M)$ denote the length of an $R$-module $M$. In this paper, we show that $$ \lim_{n \to \infty} \frac{\l\bigl(H^0_{\mathfrak{m}}(R/I^n)\bigr)}{n^d} =\lim_{n \to \infty} \frac{\l\bigl(\Ext^d_R\bigl(R/I^n,R(-d)\bigr)\bigr)}{n^d} $$ always exists. This limit has been shown to be ${e(I)}/{d!}$ for $m$-primary ideals $I$ in a local Cohen--Macaulay ring, where $e(I)$ denotes the multiplicity of $I$. But we find that this limit may not be rational in general. We give an example for which the limit is an irrational number thereby showing that the lengths of these extention modules may not have polynomial growth.

Let $K$ be a function on a unimodular locally compact group $G$, and denote by $K_n = K*K* \cdots * K$ the $n$-th convolution power of $K$. Assuming that $K$ satisfies certain operator estimates in $L^2(G)$, we give estimates of the norms $\|K_n\|_2$ and $\|K_n\|_\infty$ for large $n$. In contrast to previous methods for estimating $\|K_n\|_\infty$, we do not need to assume that the function $K$ is a probability density or non-negative. Our results also adapt for continuous time semigroups on $G$. Various applications are given, for example, to estimates of the behaviour of heat kernels on Lie groups.

The main result of the paper is a {\em reciprocity law} which proves that compatible systems of semisimple, abelian mod $p$ representations (of arbitrary dimension) of absolute Galois groups of number fields, arise from Hecke characters. In the last section analogs for Galois groups of function fields of these results are explored, and a question is raised whose answer seems to require developments in transcendence theory in characteristic $p$.

Estimating the degree of approximation in the uniform norm, of a convex function on a finite interval, by convex algebraic polynomials, has received wide attention over the last twenty years. However, while much progress has been made especially in recent years by, among others, the authors of this article, separately and jointly, there have been left some interesting open questions. In this paper we give final answers to all those open problems. We are able to say, for each $r$th differentiable convex function, whether or not its degree of convex polynomial approximation in the uniform norm may be estimated by a Jackson-type estimate involving the weighted Ditzian-Totik $k$th modulus of smoothness, and how the constants in this estimate behave. It turns out that for some pairs $(k,r)$ we have such estimate with constants depending only on these parameters. For other pairs the estimate is valid, but only with constants that depend on the function being approximated, while there are pairs for which the Jackson-type estimate is, in general, invalid.

Let $L(X)$ be the space of bounded linear operators on the Banach space $X$. We study the strict singularity andcosingularity of the two-sided multiplication operators $S \mapsto ASB$ on $L(X)$, where $A,B \in L(X)$ are fixed bounded operators and $X$ is a classical Banach space. Let $1<p<\infty$ and $p \neq 2$. Our main result establishes thatthe multiplication $S \mapsto ASB$ is strictly singular on $L\bigl(L^p(0,1)\bigr)$ if and only if the non-zero operators $A, B \in L\bigl(L^p(0,1)\bigr)$ are strictly singular. We also discuss the case where $X$ is a $\mathcal{L}^1$- or a $\mathcal{L}^\infty$-space, as well as several other relevant examples.

We study the semilinear equation \begin{equation*} -\Delta_{\mathbb H} u(\eta) + u(\eta) = f(\eta, u(\eta)),\quad u \in \So(\Omega), \end{equation*} where $\Omega$ is an unbounded domain of the Heisenberg group $\mathbb H^N$, $N\ge 1$. The space $\So(\Omega)$ is the Heisenberg analogue of the Sobolev space $W_0^{1,2}(\Omega)$. The function $f\colon \overline{\Omega}\times \mathbb R\to \mathbb R$ is supposed to be odd in $u$, continuous and satisfy some (superlinear but subcritical) growth conditions. The operator $\Delta_{\mathbb H}$ is the subelliptic Laplacian on the Heisenberg group. We give a condition on $\Omega$ which implies the existence of infinitely many solutions of the above equation. In the proof we rewrite the equation as a variational problem, and show that the corresponding functional satisfies the Palais--Smale condition. This might be quite surprising since we deal with domains which are far from bounded. The technique we use rests on a compactness argument and the maximum principle.

We study Dupin hypersurfaces in $\mathbb R^5$ parametrized by lines of curvature, with four distinct principal curvatures. We characterize locally a generic family of such hypersurfaces in terms of the principal curvatures and four vector valued functions of one variable. We show that these vector valued functions are invariant by inversions and homotheties.

In 1999 V. Arnol'd introduced the local contact algebra: studying the problem of classification of singular curves in a contact space, he showed the existence of the ghost of the contact structure (invariants which are not related to the induced structure on the curve). Our main result implies that the only reason for existence of the local contact algebra and the ghost is the difference between the geometric and (defined in this paper) algebraic restriction of a $1$-form to a singular submanifold. We prove that a germ of any subset $N$ of a contact manifold is well defined, up to contactomorphisms, by the algebraic restriction to $N$ of the contact structure. This is a generalization of the Darboux-Givental' theorem for smooth submanifolds of a contact manifold. Studying the difference between the geometric and the algebraic restrictions gives a powerful tool for classification of stratified submanifolds of a contact manifold. This is illustrated by complete solution of three classification problems, including a simple explanation of V.~Arnold's results and further classification results for singular curves in a contact space. We also prove several results on the external geometry of a singular submanifold $N$ in terms of the algebraic restriction of the contact structure to $N$. In particular, the algebraic restriction is zero if and only if $N$ is contained in a smooth Legendrian submanifold of $M$.

No abstract.