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Graph theory in America 1876-1950
This narrative is a history of the contributions made to graph theory in the United States of America by American mathematicians and others who supported the growth of scholarship in that country, between the years 1876 and 1950.
The beginning of this period coincided with the opening of the first research university in the United States of America, The Johns Hopkins University (although undergraduates were also taught), providing the facilities and impetus for the development of new ideas. The hiring, from England, of one of the foremost mathematicians of the time provided the necessary motivation for research and development for a new generation of American scholars. In addition, it was at this time that home-grown research mathematicians were first coming to prominence.
At the beginning of the twentieth century European interest in graph theory, and to some extent the four-colour problem, began to wane. Over three decades, American mathematicians took up this field of study - notably, Oswald Veblen, George Birkhoff, Philip Franklin, and Hassler Whitney. It is necessary to stress that these four mathematicians and all the other scholars mentioned in this history were not just graph theorists but worked in many other disciplines. Indeed, they not only made significant contributions to diverse fields but, in some cases, they created those fields themselves and set the standards for others to follow. Moreover, whilst they made considerable contributions to graph theory in general, two of them developed important ideas in connection with the four-colour problem. Grounded in a paper by Alfred Bray Kempe that was notorious for its fallacious 'proof' of the four-colour theorem, these ideas were the concepts of an unavoidable set and a reducible configuration.
To place the story of these scholars within the history of mathematics, America, and graph theory, brief accounts are presented of the early years of graph theory, the early years of mathematics and graph theory in the USA, and the effects of the founding of the first institute for postgraduate study in America. Additionally, information has been included on other influences by such global events as the two world wars, the depression, the influx of European scholars into the United States of America, mainly during the 1930s, and the parallel development of graph theory in Europe.
Until the end of the nineteenth century, graph theory had been almost entirely the prerogative of European mathematicians. Perhaps the first work in graph theory carried out in America was by Charles Sanders Peirce, arguably America's greatest logician and philosopher at the time. In the 1860s, he studied the four-colour conjecture and claimed to have written at least two papers on the subject during that decade, but unfortunately neither of these has survived. William Edward Story entered the field in 1879, with unfortunate consequences, but it was not until 1897 that an American mathematician presented a lecture on the subject, albeit only to have the paper disappear. Paul Wernicke presented a lecture on the four-colour problem to the American Mathematician Society, but again the paper has not survived. However, his 1904 paper has survived and added to the story of graph theory, and particularly the four-colour conjecture.
The year 1912 saw the real beginning of American graph theory with Veblen and Birkhoff publishing major contributions to the subject. It was around this time that European mathematicians appeared to lose interest in graph theory. In the period 1912 to 1950 much of the progress made in the subject was from America and by 1950 not only had the United States of America become the foremost country for mathematics, it was the leading centre for graph theory
QCD
We discuss issues of QCD at the LHC including parton distributions, Monte
Carlo event generators, the available next-to-leading order calculations,
resummation, photon production, small x physics, double parton scattering, and
backgrounds to Higgs production.Comment: 115 pages, Latex, 47 figures, to appear in the Report of the ``1999
CERN Workshop on SM Physics (and more) at the LHC'', S. Catani, M. Dittmar,
D. Soper, W.J. Stirling, S. Tapprogge (convenors
Numerical Hermitian Yang-Mills Connections and Vector Bundle Stability in Heterotic Theories
A numerical algorithm is presented for explicitly computing the gauge
connection on slope-stable holomorphic vector bundles on Calabi-Yau manifolds.
To illustrate this algorithm, we calculate the connections on stable monad
bundles defined on the K3 twofold and Quintic threefold. An error measure is
introduced to determine how closely our algorithmic connection approximates a
solution to the Hermitian Yang-Mills equations. We then extend our results by
investigating the behavior of non slope-stable bundles. In a variety of
examples, it is shown that the failure of these bundles to satisfy the
Hermitian Yang-Mills equations, including field-strength singularities, can be
accurately reproduced numerically. These results make it possible to
numerically determine whether or not a vector bundle is slope-stable, thus
providing an important new tool in the exploration of heterotic vacua.Comment: 52 pages, 15 figures. LaTex formatting of figures corrected in
version 2
Casimir scaling and renormalization of Polyakov loops in large-N gauge theories
We study Casimir scaling and renormalization properties of Polyakov loops in
different irreducible representations in SU(N) gauge theories; in particular,
we investigate the approach to the large-N limit, by performing lattice
simulations of Yang-Mills theories with an increasing number of colors, from 2
to 6. We consider the twelve lowest irreducible representations for each gauge
group, and find strong numerical evidence for nearly perfect Casimir scaling of
the bare Polyakov loops in the deconfined phase. Then we discuss the
temperature dependence of renormalized loops, which is found to be
qualitatively and quantitatively very similar for the various gauge groups. In
particular, close to the deconfinement transition, the renormalized Polyakov
loop increases with the temperature, and its logarithm reveals a characteristic
dependence on the inverse of the square of the temperature. At higher
temperatures, the renormalized Polyakov loop overshoots one, reaches a maximum,
and then starts decreasing, in agreement with weak-coupling predictions. The
implications of these findings are discussed.Comment: 1+33 pages, 14 figures; v2: expanded discussion in sections 2 and 3,
added references: version published in JHE
A Systematic Extended Iterative Solution for QCD
An outline is given of an extended perturbative solution of Euclidean QCD
which systematically accounts for a class of nonperturbative effects, while
allowing renormalization by the perturbative counterterms. Proper vertices
Gamma are approximated by a double sequence Gamma[r,p], with r the degree of
rational approximation w.r.t. the QCD mass scale Lambda, nonanalytic in the
coupling g, and p the order of perturbative corrections in g-squared,
calculated from Gamma[r,0] - rather than from the perturbative Feynman rules
Gamma(0)(pert) - as a starting point. The mechanism allowing the
nonperturbative terms to reproduce themselves in the Dyson-Schwinger equations
preserves perturbative renormalizability and is tied to the divergence
structure of the theory. As a result, it restricts the self-consistency problem
for the Gamma[r,0] rigorously - i.e. without decoupling approximations - to the
superficially divergent vertices. An interesting aspect of the scheme is that
rational-function sequences for the propagators allow subsequences describing
short-lived excitations. The method is calculational, in that it allows known
techniques of loop computation to be used while dealing with integrands of
truly nonperturbative content.Comment: 48 pages (figures included). Scope of replacement: correction of a
technical defect; no changes in conten
Parity doubling in particle physics
Parity doubling in excited hadrons is reviewed. Parity degeneracy in hadrons
was first experimentally observed 40 years ago. Recently new experimental data
on light mesons caused much excitement and renewed interest to the phenomenon,
which still remains to be enigmatic. The present retrospective review is an
attempt to trace the history of parity doubling phenomenon, thus providing a
kind of introduction to the subject. We begin with early approaches of 1960s
(Regge theory and dynamical symmetries) and end up with the latest trends
(manifestations of broader degeneracies and AdS/QCD). We show the evolution of
various ideas about parity doubling. The experimental evidence for this
phenomenon is scrutinized in the non-strange sector. Some experiments of 1960s
devoted to the search for missing non-strange bosons are re-examined and it is
argued that results of these experiments are encouraging from the modern
perspective.Comment: Version to appear in Int. J. Mod. Phys. A, 63 pages, 9 figure
Counting Chiral Operators in Quiver Gauge Theories
We discuss in detail the problem of counting BPS gauge invariant operators in
the chiral ring of quiver gauge theories living on D-branes probing generic
toric CY singularities. The computation of generating functions that include
counting of baryonic operators is based on a relation between the baryonic
charges in field theory and the Kaehler moduli of the CY singularities. A study
of the interplay between gauge theory and geometry shows that given geometrical
sectors appear more than once in the field theory, leading to a notion of
"multiplicities". We explain in detail how to decompose the generating function
for one D-brane into different sectors and how to compute their relevant
multiplicities by introducing geometric and anomalous baryonic charges. The
Plethystic Exponential remains a major tool for passing from one D-brane to
arbitrary number of D-branes. Explicit formulae are given for few examples,
including C^3/Z_3, F_0, and dP_1.Comment: 75 pages, 22 figure
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