A Result About the Density of Iterated Line Intersections in the Plane

Let $S$ be a finite set of points in the plane and let $\mathcal{T}(S)$ be the set of intersection points between pairs of lines passing through any two points in $S$. We characterize all configurations of points $S$ such that iteration of the above operation produces a dense set. We also discuss partial results on the characterization of those finite point-sets with rational coordinates that generate all of $\mathbb Q^2$ through iteration of $\mathcal{T}$.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures (low-res for the arXiv), Computational Geometry: Theory and Application

Dynamics of vortex dipoles in anisotropic Bose-Einstein condensates

We study the motion of a vortex dipole in a Bose-Einstein condensate confined to an anisotropic trap. We focus on a system of ordinary differential equations describing the vortices' motion, which is in turn a reduced model of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation describing the condensate's motion. Using a sequence of canonical changes of variables, we reduce the dimension and simplify the equations of motion. We uncover two interesting regimes. Near a family of periodic orbits known as guiding centers, we find that the dynamics is essentially that of a pendulum coupled to a linear oscillator, leading to stochastic reversals in the overall direction of rotation of the dipole. Near the separatrix orbit in the isotropic system, we find other families of periodic, quasi-periodic, and chaotic trajectories. In a neighborhood of the guiding center orbits, we derive an explicit iterated map that simplifies the problem further. Numerical calculations are used to illustrate the phenomena discovered through the analysis. Using the results from the reduced system we are able to construct complex periodic orbits in the original, partial differential equation, mean-field model for Bose-Einstein condensates, which corroborates the phenomenology observed in the reduced dynamical equations

Remarks on endomorphisms and rational points

Let X be a variety over a number field and let f: X --> X be an "interesting" rational self-map with a fixed point q. We make some general remarks concerning the possibility of using the behaviour of f near q to produce many rational points on X. As an application, we give a simplified proof of the potential density of rational points on the variety of lines of a cubic fourfold (originally obtained by Claire Voisin and the first author in 2007).Comment: LaTeX, 22 pages. v2: some minor observations added, misprints corrected, appendix modified

On the arithmetic sums of Cantor sets

Let C_\la and C_\ga be two affine Cantor sets in $\mathbb{R}$ with similarity dimensions d_\la and d_\ga, respectively. We define an analog of the Bandt-Graf condition for self-similar systems and use it to give necessary and sufficient conditions for having \Ha^{d_\la+d_\ga}(C_\la + C_\ga)>0 where C_\la + C_\ga denotes the arithmetic sum of the sets. We use this result to analyze the orthogonal projection properties of sets of the form C_\la \times C_\ga. We prove that for Lebesgue almost all directions $\theta$ for which the projection is not one-to-one, the projection has zero (d_\la + d_\ga)-dimensional Hausdorff measure. We demonstrate the results on the case when C_\la and C_\ga are the middle-(1-2\la) and middle-(1-2\ga) sets

Backlund transformations and knots of constant torsion

The Backlund transformation for pseudospherical surfaces, which is equivalent to that of the sine-Gordon equation, can be restricted to give a transformation on space curves that preserves constant torsion. We study its effects on closed curves (in particular, elastic rods) that generate multiphase solutions for the vortex filament flow (also known as the Localized Induction Equation). In doing so, we obtain analytic constant-torsion representatives for a large number of knot types.Comment: AMSTeX, 29 pages, 5 Postscript figures, uses BoxedEPSF.tex (all necessary files are included in backlund.tar.gz