Perturbative evolution of the static configurations, quasinormal modes and quasi normal ringing in the Apostolatos - Thorne cylindrical shell model

We study the perturbative evolution of the static configurations, quasinormal modes and quasi normal ringing in the Apostolatos - Thorne cylindrical shell model. We consider first an expansion in harmonic modes and show that it provides a complete solution for the characteristic value problem for the finite perturbations of a static configuration. As a consequence of this completeness we obtain a proof of the stability of static solutions under this type of perturbations. The explicit expression for the mode expansion are then used to obtain numerical values for some of the quasi normal mode complex frequencies. Some examples involving the numerical evaluation of the integral mode expansions are described and analyzed, and the quasi normal ringing displayed by the solutions is found to be in agreement with quasi normal modes found previously. Going back to the full relativistic equations of motion we find their general linear form by expanding to first order about a static solution. We then show that the resulting set of coupled ordinary and partial differential equations for the dynamical variables of the system can be used to set an initial plus boundary values problem, and prove that there is an associated positive definite constant of the motion that puts absolute bounds on the dynamic variables of the system, establishing the stability of the motion of the shell under arbitrary, finite perturbations. We also show that the problem can be solved numerically, and provide some explicit examples that display the complete agreement between the purely numerical evolution and that obtained using the mode expansion, in particular regarding the quasi normal ringing that results in the evolution of the system. We also discuss the relation of the present work to some recent results on the same model that have appeared in the literature.Comment: 27 pages, 7 figure

On Open Scattering Channels for Manifolds with Ends

In the framework of time-dependent geometric scattering theory, we study the existence and completeness of the wave operators for perturbations of the Riemannian metric for the Laplacian on a complete manifold of dimension $n$. The smallness condition for the perturbation is expressed (intrinsically and coordinate free) in purely geometric terms using the harmonic radius; therefore, the size of the perturbation can be controlled in terms of local bounds on the injectivity radius and the Ricci-curvature. As an application of these ideas we obtain a stability result for the scattering matrix with respect to perturbations of the Riemannian metric. This stability result implies that a scattering channel which interacts with other channels preserves this property under small perturbations.Comment: updated version, now 43 page

Monotone Projection Lower Bounds from Extended Formulation Lower Bounds

In this short note, we reduce lower bounds on monotone projections of polynomials to lower bounds on extended formulations of polytopes. Applying our reduction to the seminal extended formulation lower bounds of Fiorini, Massar, Pokutta, Tiwari, & de Wolf (STOC 2012; J. ACM, 2015) and Rothvoss (STOC 2014; J. ACM, 2017), we obtain the following interesting consequences. 1. The Hamiltonian Cycle polynomial is not a monotone subexponential-size projection of the permanent; this both rules out a natural attempt at a monotone lower bound on the Boolean permanent, and shows that the permanent is not complete for non-negative polynomials in VNP$_{{\mathbb R}}$ under monotone p-projections. 2. The cut polynomials and the perfect matching polynomial (or "unsigned Pfaffian") are not monotone p-projections of the permanent. The latter, over the Boolean and-or semi-ring, rules out monotone reductions in one of the natural approaches to reducing perfect matchings in general graphs to perfect matchings in bipartite graphs. As the permanent is universal for monotone formulas, these results also imply exponential lower bounds on the monotone formula size and monotone circuit size of these polynomials.Comment: Published in Theory of Computing, Volume 13 (2017), Article 18; Received: November 10, 2015, Revised: July 27, 2016, Published: December 22, 201

FPT is Characterized by Useful Obstruction Sets

Many graph problems were first shown to be fixed-parameter tractable using the results of Robertson and Seymour on graph minors. We show that the combination of finite, computable, obstruction sets and efficient order tests is not just one way of obtaining strongly uniform FPT algorithms, but that all of FPT may be captured in this way. Our new characterization of FPT has a strong connection to the theory of kernelization, as we prove that problems with polynomial kernels can be characterized by obstruction sets whose elements have polynomial size. Consequently we investigate the interplay between the sizes of problem kernels and the sizes of the elements of such obstruction sets, obtaining several examples of how results in one area yield new insights in the other. We show how exponential-size minor-minimal obstructions for pathwidth k form the crucial ingredient in a novel OR-cross-composition for k-Pathwidth, complementing the trivial AND-composition that is known for this problem. In the other direction, we show that OR-cross-compositions into a parameterized problem can be used to rule out the existence of efficiently generated quasi-orders on its instances that characterize the NO-instances by polynomial-size obstructions.Comment: Extended abstract with appendix, as accepted to WG 201