2,786 research outputs found
Incompatible sets of gradients and metastability
We give a mathematical analysis of a concept of metastability induced by
incompatibility. The physical setting is a single parent phase, just about to
undergo transformation to a product phase of lower energy density. Under
certain conditions of incompatibility of the energy wells of this energy
density, we show that the parent phase is metastable in a strong sense, namely
it is a local minimizer of the free energy in an neighbourhood of its
deformation. The reason behind this result is that, due to the incompatibility
of the energy wells, a small nucleus of the product phase is necessarily
accompanied by a stressed transition layer whose energetic cost exceeds the
energy lowering capacity of the nucleus. We define and characterize
incompatible sets of matrices, in terms of which the transition layer estimate
at the heart of the proof of metastability is expressed. Finally we discuss
connections with experiment and place this concept of metastability in the
wider context of recent theoretical and experimental research on metastability
and hysteresis.Comment: Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysis, to appea
Polynomial cubic differentials and convex polygons in the projective plane
We construct and study a natural homeomorphism between the moduli space of
polynomial cubic differentials of degree d on the complex plane and the space
of projective equivalence classes of oriented convex polygons with d+3
vertices. This map arises from the construction of a complete hyperbolic affine
sphere with prescribed Pick differential, and can be seen as an analogue of the
Labourie-Loftin parameterization of convex RP^2 structures on a compact surface
by the bundle of holomorphic cubic differentials over Teichmuller space.Comment: 64 pages, 5 figures. v3: Minor revisions according to referee report.
v2: Corrections in section 5 and related new material in appendix
Minimal stretch maps between hyperbolic surfaces
This paper develops a theory of Lipschitz comparisons of hyperbolic surfaces
analogous to the theory of quasi-conformal comparisons. Extremal Lipschitz maps
(minimal stretch maps) and geodesics for the `Lipschitz metric' are
constructed. The extremal Lipschitz constant equals the maximum ratio of
lengths of measured laminations, which is attained with probability one on a
simple closed curve. Cataclysms are introduced, generalizing earthquakes by
permitting more violent shearing in both directions along a fault. Cataclysms
provide useful coordinates for Teichmuller space that are convenient for
computing derivatives of geometric function in Teichmuller space and measured
lamination space.Comment: 53 pages, 11 figures, version of 1986 preprin
Deterministic Sampling and Range Counting in Geometric Data Streams
We present memory-efficient deterministic algorithms for constructing
epsilon-nets and epsilon-approximations of streams of geometric data. Unlike
probabilistic approaches, these deterministic samples provide guaranteed bounds
on their approximation factors. We show how our deterministic samples can be
used to answer approximate online iceberg geometric queries on data streams. We
use these techniques to approximate several robust statistics of geometric data
streams, including Tukey depth, simplicial depth, regression depth, the
Thiel-Sen estimator, and the least median of squares. Our algorithms use only a
polylogarithmic amount of memory, provided the desired approximation factors
are inverse-polylogarithmic. We also include a lower bound for non-iceberg
geometric queries.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figur
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