The importance of the Selberg integral

It has been remarked that a fair measure of the impact of Atle Selberg's work is the number of mathematical terms which bear his name. One of these is the Selberg integral, an n-dimensional generalization of the Euler beta integral. We trace its sudden rise to prominence, initiated by a question to Selberg from Enrico Bombieri, more than thirty years after publication. In quick succession the Selberg integral was used to prove an outstanding conjecture in random matrix theory, and cases of the Macdonald conjectures. It further initiated the study of q-analogues, which in turn enriched the Macdonald conjectures. We review these developments and proceed to exhibit the sustained prominence of the Selberg integral, evidenced by its central role in random matrix theory, Calogero-Sutherland quantum many body systems, Knizhnik-Zamolodchikov equations, and multivariable orthogonal polynomial theory.Comment: 43 page

Generalizing Boolean Satisfiability II: Theory

This is the second of three planned papers describing ZAP, a satisfiability engine that substantially generalizes existing tools while retaining the performance characteristics of modern high performance solvers. The fundamental idea underlying ZAP is that many problems passed to such engines contain rich internal structure that is obscured by the Boolean representation used; our goal is to define a representation in which this structure is apparent and can easily be exploited to improve computational performance. This paper presents the theoretical basis for the ideas underlying ZAP, arguing that existing ideas in this area exploit a single, recurring structure in that multiple database axioms can be obtained by operating on a single axiom using a subgroup of the group of permutations on the literals in the problem. We argue that the group structure precisely captures the general structure at which earlier approaches hinted, and give numerous examples of its use. We go on to extend the Davis-Putnam-Logemann-Loveland inference procedure to this broader setting, and show that earlier computational improvements are either subsumed or left intact by the new method. The third paper in this series discusses ZAPs implementation and presents experimental performance results

One-Loop Gauge Theory Amplitudes in N=4 Super Yang-Mills from MHV Vertices

We propose a new, twistor string theory inspired formalism to calculate loop amplitudes in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory. In this approach, maximal helicity violating (MHV) tree amplitudes of N=4 super Yang-Mills are used as vertices, using an off-shell prescription introduced by Cachazo, Svrcek and Witten, and combined into effective diagrams that incorporate large numbers of conventional Feynman diagrams. As an example, we apply this formalism to the particular class of MHV one-loop scattering amplitudes with an arbitrary number of external legs in N=4 super Yang-Mills. Remarkably, our approach naturally leads to a representation of the amplitudes as dispersion integrals, which we evaluate exactly. This yields a new, simplified form for the MHV amplitudes, which is equivalent to the expressions obtained previously by Bern, Dixon, Dunbar and Kosower using the cut-constructibility approach.Comment: Latex, 35 pages, 3 figures. v2: remarks on gauge invariance added. Published version to appear in Nuclear Physics

Short expressions of permutations as products and cryptanalysis of the Algebraic Eraser

On March 2004, Anshel, Anshel, Goldfeld, and Lemieux introduced the \emph{Algebraic Eraser} scheme for key agreement over an insecure channel, using a novel hybrid of infinite and finite noncommutative groups. They also introduced the \emph{Colored Burau Key Agreement Protocol (CBKAP)}, a concrete realization of this scheme. We present general, efficient heuristic algorithms, which extract the shared key out of the public information provided by CBKAP. These algorithms are, according to heuristic reasoning and according to massive experiments, successful for all sizes of the security parameters, assuming that the keys are chosen with standard distributions. Our methods come from probabilistic group theory (permutation group actions and expander graphs). In particular, we provide a simple algorithm for finding short expressions of permutations in $S_n$, as products of given random permutations. Heuristically, our algorithm gives expressions of length $O(n^2\log n)$, in time and space $O(n^3)$. Moreover, this is provable from \emph{the Minimal Cycle Conjecture}, a simply stated hypothesis concerning the uniform distribution on $S_n$. Experiments show that the constants in these estimations are small. This is the first practical algorithm for this problem for $n\ge 256$. Remark: \emph{Algebraic Eraser} is a trademark of SecureRF. The variant of CBKAP actually implemented by SecureRF uses proprietary distributions, and thus our results do not imply its vulnerability. See also arXiv:abs/12020598Comment: Final version, accepted to Advances in Applied Mathematics. Title slightly change

Jacobians and rank 1 perturbations relating to unitary Hessenberg matrices

In a recent work Killip and Nenciu gave random recurrences for the characteristic polynomials of certain unitary and real orthogonal upper Hessenberg matrices. The corresponding eigenvalue p.d.f.'s are beta-generalizations of the classical groups. Left open was the direct calculation of certain Jacobians. We provide the sought direct calculation. Furthermore, we show how a multiplicative rank 1 perturbation of the unitary Hessenberg matrices provides a joint eigenvalue p.d.f generalizing the circular beta-ensemble, and we show how this joint density is related to known inter-relations between circular ensembles. Projecting the joint density onto the real line leads to the derivation of a random three-term recurrence for polynomials with zeros distributed according to the circular Jacobi beta-ensemble.Comment: 23 page

The orbifold transform and its applications

We discuss the notion of the orbifold transform, and illustrate it on simple examples. The basic properties of the transform are presented, including transitivity and the exponential formula for symmetric products. The connection with the theory of permutation orbifolds is addressed, and the general results illustrated on the example of torus partition functions

Finite Form of the Quintuple Product Identity

The celebrated quintuple product identity follows surprisingly from an almost-trivial algebraic identity, which is the limiting case of the terminating q-Dixon formula.Comment: 1 pag