Exact Solutions of Regge-Wheeler Equation and Quasi-Normal Modes of Compact Objects

The well-known Regge-Wheeler equation describes the axial perturbations of Schwarzschild metric in the linear approximation. From a mathematical point of view it presents a particular case of the confluent Heun equation and can be solved exactly, due to recent mathematical developments. We present the basic properties of its general solution. A novel analytical approach and numerical techniques for study the boundary problems which correspond to quasi-normal modes of black holes and other simple models of compact objects are developed.Comment: latex file, 25 pages, 4 figures, new references, new results and new Appendix added, some comments and corrections in the text made. Accepted for publication in Classical and Quantum Gravity, 2006, simplification of notations, changes in the norm in some formulas, corrections in reference

A galaxy-halo model of large-scale structure

We present a new, galaxy-halo model of large-scale structure, in which the galaxies entering a given sample are the fundamental objects. Haloes attach to galaxies, in contrast to the standard halo model, in which galaxies attach to haloes. The galaxy-halo model pertains mainly to the relationships between the power spectra of galaxies and mass, and their cross-power spectrum. With surprisingly little input, an intuition-aiding approximation to the galaxy-matter cross-correlation coefficient R(k) emerges, in terms of the halo mass dispersion. This approximation seems valid to mildly non-linear scales (k < ~3 h/Mpc), allowing measurement of the bias and the matter power spectrum from measurements of the galaxy and galaxy-matter power spectra (or correlation functions). This is especially relevant given the recent advances in precision in measurements of the galaxy-matter correlation function from weak gravitational lensing. The galaxy-halo model also addresses the issue of interpreting the galaxy-matter correlation function as an average halo density profile, and provides a simple description of galaxy bias as a function of scale.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, submitted to MNRAS. Minor changes, suggested by refere

Improved Approximation Bounds for the Minimum Constraint Removal Problem

In the minimum constraint removal problem, we are given a set of geometric objects as obstacles in the plane, and we want to find the minimum number of obstacles that must be removed to reach a target point t from the source point s by an obstacle-free path. The problem is known to be intractable, and (perhaps surprisingly) no sub-linear approximations are known even for simple obstacles such as rectangles and disks. The main result of our paper is a new approximation technique that gives O(sqrt{n})-approximation for rectangles, disks as well as rectilinear polygons. The technique also gives O(sqrt{n})-approximation for the minimum color path problem in graphs. We also present some inapproximability results for the geometric constraint removal problem

Tighter Estimates for ϵ-nets for Disks

International audienceThe geometric hitting set problem is one of the basic geometric combinatorial optimization problems: given a set P of points, and a set D of geometric objects in the plane, the goal is to compute a small-sized subset of P that hits all objects in D. In 1994, Bronniman and Goodrich [5] made an important connection of this problem to the size of fundamental combinatorial structures called ϵ-nets, showing that small-sized ϵ-nets imply approximation algorithms with correspondingly small approximation ratios. Very recently, Agarwal and Pan [2] showed that their scheme can be implemented in near-linear time for disks in the plane. Altogether this gives O(1)-factor approximation algorithms in O(n) time for hitting sets for disks in the plane. This constant factor depends on the sizes of ϵ-nets for disks; unfortunately, the current state-of-the-art bounds are large – at least 24/ϵ and most likely larger than 40/ϵ. Thus the approximation factor of the Agarwal and Pan algorithm ends up being more than 40. The best lower-bound is 2/ϵ, which follows from the Pach-Woeginger construction [32] for halfplanes in two dimensions. Thus there is a large gap between the best-known upper and lower bounds. Besides being of independent interest, finding precise bounds is important since this immediately implies an improved linear-time algorithm for the hitting-set problem. The main goal of this paper is to improve the upper-bound to 13.4/ϵ for disks in the plane. The proof is constructive, giving a simple algorithm that uses only Delaunay triangulations. We have implemented the algorithm, which is available as a public open-source module. Experimental results show that the sizes of-nets for a variety of data-sets is lower, around 9/ϵ

Approximating Dominating Set on Intersection Graphs of Rectangles and L-frames

We consider the Minimum Dominating Set (MDS) problem on the intersection graphs of geometric objects. Even for simple and widely-used geometric objects such as rectangles, no sub-logarithmic approximation is known for the problem and (perhaps surprisingly) the problem is NP-hard even when all the rectangles are "anchored" at a diagonal line with slope -1 (Pandit, CCCG 2017). In this paper, we first show that for any epsilon>0, there exists a (2+epsilon)-approximation algorithm for the MDS problem on "diagonal-anchored" rectangles, providing the first O(1)-approximation for the problem on a non-trivial subclass of rectangles. It is not hard to see that the MDS problem on "diagonal-anchored" rectangles is the same as the MDS problem on "diagonal-anchored" L-frames: the union of a vertical and a horizontal line segment that share an endpoint. As such, we also obtain a (2+epsilon)-approximation for the problem with "diagonal-anchored" L-frames. On the other hand, we show that the problem is APX-hard in case the input L-frames intersect the diagonal, or the horizontal segments of the L-frames intersect a vertical line. However, as we show, the problem is linear-time solvable in case the L-frames intersect a vertical as well as a horizontal line. Finally, we consider the MDS problem in the so-called "edge intersection model" and obtain a number of results, answering two questions posed by Mehrabi (WAOA 2017)