Large sample theory of intrinsic and extrinsic sample means on manifolds--II

This article develops nonparametric inference procedures for estimation and testing problems for means on manifolds. A central limit theorem for Frechet sample means is derived leading to an asymptotic distribution theory of intrinsic sample means on Riemannian manifolds. Central limit theorems are also obtained for extrinsic sample means w.r.t. an arbitrary embedding of a differentiable manifold in a Euclidean space. Bootstrap methods particularly suitable for these problems are presented. Applications are given to distributions on the sphere S^d (directional spaces), real projective space RP^{N-1} (axial spaces), complex projective space CP^{k-2} (planar shape spaces) w.r.t. Veronese-Whitney embeddings and a three-dimensional shape space \Sigma_3^4.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/009053605000000093 in the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

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

Gopakumar-Vafa invariants via vanishing cycles

In this paper, we propose an ansatz for defining Gopakumar-Vafa invariants of Calabi-Yau threefolds, using perverse sheaves of vanishing cycles. Our proposal is a modification of a recent approach of Kiem-Li, which is itself based on earlier ideas of Hosono-Saito-Takahashi. We conjecture that these invariants are equivalent to other curve-counting theories such as Gromov-Witten theory and Pandharipande-Thomas theory. Our main theorem is that, for local surfaces, our invariants agree with PT invariants for irreducible one-cycles. We also give a counter-example to the Kiem-Li conjectures, where our invariants match the predicted answer. Finally, we give examples where our invariant matches the expected answer in cases where the cycle is non-reduced, non-planar, or non-primitive.Comment: 63 pages, many improvements of the exposition following referee comments, final version to appear in Inventione