Learning Edge Representations via Low-Rank Asymmetric Projections

We propose a new method for embedding graphs while preserving directed edge information. Learning such continuous-space vector representations (or embeddings) of nodes in a graph is an important first step for using network information (from social networks, user-item graphs, knowledge bases, etc.) in many machine learning tasks. Unlike previous work, we (1) explicitly model an edge as a function of node embeddings, and we (2) propose a novel objective, the "graph likelihood", which contrasts information from sampled random walks with non-existent edges. Individually, both of these contributions improve the learned representations, especially when there are memory constraints on the total size of the embeddings. When combined, our contributions enable us to significantly improve the state-of-the-art by learning more concise representations that better preserve the graph structure. We evaluate our method on a variety of link-prediction task including social networks, collaboration networks, and protein interactions, showing that our proposed method learn representations with error reductions of up to 76% and 55%, on directed and undirected graphs. In addition, we show that the representations learned by our method are quite space efficient, producing embeddings which have higher structure-preserving accuracy but are 10 times smaller

Markov convexity and nonembeddability of the Heisenberg group

We compute the Markov convexity invariant of the continuous infinite dimensional Heisenberg group $\mathbb{H}_\infty$ to show that it is Markov 4-convex and cannot be Markov $p$-convex for any $p < 4$. As Markov convexity is a biLipschitz invariant and Hilbert space is Markov 2-convex, this gives a different proof of the classical theorem of Pansu and Semmes that the Heisenberg group does not admit a biLipschitz embedding into any Euclidean space. The Markov convexity lower bound will follow from exhibiting an explicit embedding of Laakso graphs $G_n$ into $\mathbb{H}_\infty$ that has distortion at most $C n^{1/4} \sqrt{\log n}$. We use this to show that if $X$ is a Markov $p$-convex metric space, then balls of the discrete Heisenberg group $\mathbb{H}(\mathbb{Z})$ of radius $n$ embed into $X$ with distortion at least some constant multiple of $$\frac{(\log n)^{\frac{1}{p}-\frac{1}{4}}}{\sqrt{\log \log n}}.$$ Finally, we show that Markov 4-convexity does not give the optimal distortion for embeddings of binary trees $B_m$ into $\mathbb{H}_\infty$ by showing that the distortion is on the order of $\sqrt{\log m}$.Comment: version to appear in Ann. Inst. Fourie

Asymptotically rigid mapping class groups and Thompson's groups

We consider Thompson's groups from the perspective of mapping class groups of surfaces of infinite type. This point of view leads us to the braided Thompson groups, which are extensions of Thompson's groups by infinite (spherical) braid groups. We will outline the main features of these groups and some applications to the quantization of Teichm\"uller spaces. The chapter provides an introduction to the subject with an emphasis on some of the authors results.Comment: survey 77

Higher Segal spaces I

This is the first paper in a series on new higher categorical structures called higher Segal spaces. For every d > 0, we introduce the notion of a d-Segal space which is a simplicial space satisfying locality conditions related to triangulations of cyclic polytopes of dimension d. In the case d=1, we recover Rezk's theory of Segal spaces. The present paper focuses on 2-Segal spaces. The starting point of the theory is the observation that Hall algebras, as previously studied, are only the shadow of a much richer structure governed by a system of higher coherences captured in the datum of a 2-Segal space. This 2-Segal space is given by Waldhausen's S-construction, a simplicial space familiar in algebraic K-theory. Other examples of 2-Segal spaces arise naturally in classical topics such as Hecke algebras, cyclic bar constructions, configuration spaces of flags, solutions of the pentagon equation, and mapping class groups.Comment: 221 page

Automaton Semigroups and Groups: On the Undecidability of Problems Related to Freeness and Finiteness

In this paper, we study algorithmic problems for automaton semigroups and automaton groups related to freeness and finiteness. In the course of this study, we also exhibit some connections between the algebraic structure of automaton (semi)groups and their dynamics on the boundary. First, we show that it is undecidable to check whether the group generated by a given invertible automaton has a positive relation, i.e. a relation p = 1 such that p only contains positive generators. Besides its obvious relation to the freeness of the group, the absence of positive relations has previously been studied and is connected to the triviality of some stabilizers of the boundary. We show that the emptiness of the set of positive relations is equivalent to the dynamical property that all (directed positive) orbital graphs centered at non-singular points are acyclic. Gillibert showed that the finiteness problem for automaton semigroups is undecidable. In the second part of the paper, we show that this undecidability result also holds if the input is restricted to be bi-reversible and invertible (but, in general, not complete). As an immediate consequence, we obtain that the finiteness problem for automaton subsemigroups of semigroups generated by invertible, yet partial automata, so called automaton-inverse semigroups, is also undecidable. Erratum: Contrary to a statement in a previous version of the paper, our approach does not show that that the freeness problem for automaton semigroups is undecidable. We discuss this in an erratum at the end of the paper

All the shapes of spaces: a census of small 3-manifolds

In this work we present a complete (no misses, no duplicates) census for closed, connected, orientable and prime 3-manifolds induced by plane graphs with a bipartition of its edge set (blinks) up to $k=9$ edges. Blinks form a universal encoding for such manifolds. In fact, each such a manifold is a subtle class of blinks, \cite{lins2013B}. Blinks are in 1-1 correpondence with {\em blackboard framed links}, \cite {kauffman1991knots, kauffman1994tlr} We hope that this census becomes as useful for the study of concrete examples of 3-manifolds as the tables of knots are in the study of knots and links.Comment: 31 pages, 17 figures, 38 references. In this version we introduce some new material concerning composite manifold

Cactus group and monodromy of Bethe vectors

Cactus group is the fundamental group of the real locus of the Deligne-Mumford moduli space of stable rational curves. This group appears naturally as an analog of the braid group in coboundary monoidal categories. We define an action of the cactus group on the set of Bethe vectors of the Gaudin magnet chain corresponding to arbitrary semisimple Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$. Cactus group appears in our construction as a subgroup in the Galois group of Bethe Ansatz equations. Following the idea of Pavel Etingof, we conjecture that this action is isomorphic to the action of the cactus group on the tensor product of crystals coming from the general coboundary category formalism. We prove this conjecture in the case $\mathfrak{g}=\mathfrak{s}\mathfrak{l}_2$ (in fact, for this case the conjecture almost immediately follows from the results of Varchenko on asymptotic solutions of the KZ equation and crystal bases). We also present some conjectures generalizing this result to Bethe vectors of shift of argument subalgebras and relating the cactus group with the Berenstein-Kirillov group of piecewise-linear symmetries of the Gelfand-Tsetlin polytope.Comment: 23 pages, sections 2 and 3 revise