Cone fields and topological sampling in manifolds with bounded curvature

Often noisy point clouds are given as an approximation of a particular compact set of interest. A finite point cloud is a compact set. This paper proves a reconstruction theorem which gives a sufficient condition, as a bound on the Hausdorff distance between two compact sets, for when certain offsets of these two sets are homotopic in terms of the absence of {\mu}-critical points in an annular region. Since an offset of a set deformation retracts to the set itself provided that there are no critical points of the distance function nearby, we can use this theorem to show when the offset of a point cloud is homotopy equivalent to the set it is sampled from. The ambient space can be any Riemannian manifold but we focus on ambient manifolds which have nowhere negative curvature. In the process, we prove stability theorems for {\mu}-critical points when the ambient space is a manifold.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figure

Homotopy properties of endpoint maps and a theorem of Serre in subriemannian geometry

We discuss homotopy properties of endpoint maps for affine control systems. We prove that these maps are Hurewicz fibrations with respect to some $W^{1,p}$ topology on the space of trajectories, for a certain $p>1$. We study critical points of geometric costs for these affine control systems, proving that if the base manifold is compact then the number of their critical points is infinite (we use Lusternik-Schnirelmann category combined with the Hurewicz property). In the special case where the control system is subriemannian this result can be read as the corresponding version of Serre's theorem, on the existence of infinitely many geodesics between two points on a compact riemannian manifold. In the subriemannian case we show that the Hurewicz property holds for all $p\geq1$ and the horizontal-loop space with the $W^{1,2}$ topology has the homotopy type of a CW-complex (as long as the endpoint map has at least one regular value); in particular the inclusion of the horizontal-loop space in the ordinary one is a homotopy equivalence

A unifying model for several two-dimensional phase transitions

A relatively simple and physically transparent model based on quantum percolation and dephasing is employed to construct a global phase diagram which encodes and unifies the critical physics of the quantum Hall, "two-dimensional metal-insulator", classical percolation and, to some extent, superconductor-insulator transitions. Using real space renormalization group techniques, crossover functions between critical points are calculated. The critical behavior around each fixed point is analyzed and some experimentally relevant puzzles are addressed.Comment: 4 pages, including 3 figure

Conformal invariants measuring the best constants for Gagliardo-Nirenberg-Sobolev inequalities

We introduce a family of conformal invariants associated to a smooth metric measure space which generalize the relationship between the Yamabe constant and the best constant for the Sobolev inequality to the best constants for Gagliardo-Nirenberg-Sobolev inequalities $\|w\r|_q \leq C\|\nabla w\|_2^\theta \|w\|_p^{1-\theta}$. These invariants are constructed via a minimization procedure for the weighted scalar curvature functional in the conformal class of a smooth metric measure space. We then describe critical points which are also critical points for variations in the metric or the measure. When the measure is assumed to take a special form --- for example, as the volume element of an Einstein metric --- we use this description to show that minimizers of our invariants are only critical for certain values of $p$ and $q$. In particular, on Euclidean space our result states that either $p=2(q-1)$ or $q=2(p-1)$, giving a new characterization of the GNS inequalities whose sharp constants were computed by Del Pino and Dolbeault.Comment: 20 page

Computational Method for Phase Space Transport with Applications to Lobe Dynamics and Rate of Escape

Lobe dynamics and escape from a potential well are general frameworks introduced to study phase space transport in chaotic dynamical systems. While the former approach studies how regions of phase space are transported by reducing the flow to a two-dimensional map, the latter approach studies the phase space structures that lead to critical events by crossing periodic orbit around saddles. Both of these frameworks require computation with curves represented by millions of points-computing intersection points between these curves and area bounded by the segments of these curves-for quantifying the transport and escape rate. We present a theory for computing these intersection points and the area bounded between the segments of these curves based on a classification of the intersection points using equivalence class. We also present an alternate theory for curves with nontransverse intersections and a method to increase the density of points on the curves for locating the intersection points accurately.The numerical implementation of the theory presented herein is available as an open source software called Lober. We used this package to demonstrate the application of the theory to lobe dynamics that arises in fluid mechanics, and rate of escape from a potential well that arises in ship dynamics.Comment: 33 pages, 17 figure