Generalized Hadamard Product and the Derivatives of Spectral Functions

In this work we propose a generalization of the Hadamard product between two matrices to a tensor-valued, multi-linear product between k matrices for any $k \ge 1$. A multi-linear dual operator to the generalized Hadamard product is presented. It is a natural generalization of the Diag x operator, that maps a vector $x \in \R^n$ into the diagonal matrix with x on its main diagonal. Defining an action of the $n \times n$ orthogonal matrices on the space of k-dimensional tensors, we investigate its interactions with the generalized Hadamard product and its dual. The research is motivated, as illustrated throughout the paper, by the apparent suitability of this language to describe the higher-order derivatives of spectral functions and the tools needed to compute them. For more on the later we refer the reader to [14] and [15], where we use the language and properties developed here to study the higher-order derivatives of spectral functions.Comment: 24 page

Existence of Local Covariant Time Ordered Products of Quantum Fields in Curved Spacetime

We establish the existence of local, covariant time ordered products of local Wick polynomials for a free scalar field in curved spacetime. Our time ordered products satisfy all of the hypotheses of our previous uniqueness theorem, so our construction essentially completes the analysis of the existence, uniqueness and renormalizability of the perturbative expansion for nonlinear quantum field theories in curved spacetime. As a byproduct of our analysis, we derive a scaling expansion of the time ordered products about the total diagonal that expresses them as a sum of products of polynomials in the curvature times Lorentz invariant distributions, plus a remainder term of arbitrary low scaling degree.Comment: Minor revisions, 2 references added. 43 pages, Latex format, no figure

Supersymmetric Field-Theoretic Models on a Supermanifold

We propose the extension of some structural aspects that have successfully been applied in the development of the theory of quantum fields propagating on a general spacetime manifold so as to include superfield models on a supermanifold. We only deal with the limited class of supermanifolds which admit the existence of a smooth body manifold structure. Our considerations are based on the Catenacci-Reina-Teofillatto-Bryant approach to supermanifolds. In particular, we show that the class of supermanifolds constructed by Bonora-Pasti-Tonin satisfies the criterions which guarantee that a supermanifold admits a Hausdorff body manifold. This construction is the closest to the physicist's intuitive view of superspace as a manifold with some anticommuting coordinates, where the odd sector is topologically trivial. The paper also contains a new construction of superdistributions and useful results on the wavefront set of such objects. Moreover, a generalization of the spectral condition is formulated using the notion of the wavefront set of superdistributions, which is equivalent to the requirement that all of the component fields satisfy, on the body manifold, a microlocal spectral condition proposed by Brunetti-Fredenhagen-K\"ohler.Comment: Final version to appear in J.Math.Phy

On the existence of a solution to a spectral estimation problem \emph{\`a la} Byrnes-Georgiou-Lindquist

A parametric spectral estimation problem in the style of Byrnes, Georgiou, and Lindquist was posed in \cite{FPZ-10}, but the existence of a solution was only proved in a special case. Based on their results, we show that a solution indeed exists given an arbitrary matrix-valued prior density. The main tool in our proof is the topological degree theory.Comment: 6 pages of two-column draft, accepted for publication in IEEE-TA