A Hopf bundle over a quantum four-sphere from the symplectic group

We construct a quantum version of the SU(2) Hopf bundle $S^7 \to S^4$. The quantum sphere $S^7_q$ arises from the symplectic group $Sp_q(2)$ and a quantum 4-sphere $S^4_q$ is obtained via a suitable self-adjoint idempotent $p$ whose entries generate the algebra $A(S^4_q)$ of polynomial functions over it. This projection determines a deformation of an (anti-)instanton bundle over the classical sphere $S^4$. We compute the fundamental $K$-homology class of $S^4_q$ and pair it with the class of $p$ in the $K$-theory getting the value -1 for the topological charge. There is a right coaction of $SU_q(2)$ on $S^7_q$ such that the algebra $A(S^7_q)$ is a non trivial quantum principal bundle over $A(S^4_q)$ with structure quantum group $A(SU_q(2))$.Comment: 27 pages. Latex. v2 several substantial changes and improvements; to appear in CM

Changing Views on Curves and Surfaces

Visual events in computer vision are studied from the perspective of algebraic geometry. Given a sufficiently general curve or surface in 3-space, we consider the image or contour curve that arises by projecting from a viewpoint. Qualitative changes in that curve occur when the viewpoint crosses the visual event surface. We examine the components of this ruled surface, and observe that these coincide with the iterated singular loci of the coisotropic hypersurfaces associated with the original curve or surface. We derive formulas, due to Salmon and Petitjean, for the degrees of these surfaces, and show how to compute exact representations for all visual event surfaces using algebraic methods.Comment: 31 page

Bases in the solution space of the Mellin system

Local holomorphic solutions z=z(a) to a univariate sparse polynomial equation p(z) =0, in terms of its vector of complex coefficients a, are classically known to satisfy holonomic systems of linear partial differential equations with polynomial coefficients. In this paper we investigate one of such systems of differential equations which was introduced by Mellin. We compute the holonomic rank of the Mellin system as well as the dimension of the space of its algebraic solutions. Moreover, we construct explicit bases of solutions in terms of the roots of p and their logarithms. We show that the monodromy of the Mellin system is always reducible and give some factorization results in the univariate case

New examples of four dimensional AS-regular algebras

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mathematics, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (p. 48-49).This thesis deals with AS-regular algebras, first defined by Michael Artin and William Schelter in Graded Algebras of Global Dimension 3. All such algebras of dimension three have been classified, but the corresponding problem in higher dimensions remains open. We construct new examples of four dimensional AS-regular algebras, and provide some information about their module structure. Results are provided for proving the regularity of such algebras. In addition we classify the AS-regular algebras of dimension four satisfying certain conditions.by Ian Caines.Ph.D

Coordinate-wise Powers of Algebraic Varieties

We introduce and study coordinate-wise powers of subvarieties of $\mathbb{P}^n$, i.e. varieties arising from raising all points in a given subvariety of $\mathbb{P}^n$ to the $r$-th power, coordinate by coordinate. This corresponds to studying the image of a subvariety of $\mathbb{P}^n$ under the quotient of $\mathbb{P}^n$ by the action of the finite group $\mathbb{Z}_r^{n+1}$. We determine the degree of coordinate-wise powers and study their defining equations, particularly for hypersurfaces and linear spaces. Applying these results, we compute the degree of the variety of orthostochastic matrices and determine iterated dual and reciprocal varieties of power sum hypersurfaces. We also establish a link between coordinate-wise squares of linear spaces and the study of real symmetric matrices with a degenerate eigenspectrum.Comment: 26 page

F-theory and linear sigma models

We present an explicit method for translating between the linear sigma model and the spectral cover description of SU(r) stable bundles over an elliptically fibered Calabi-Yau manifold. We use this to investigate the 4-dimensional duality between (0,2) heterotic and F-theory compactifications. We indirectly find that much interesting heterotic information must be contained in the `spectral bundle' and in its dual description as a gauge theory on multiple F-theory 7-branes. A by-product of these efforts is a method for analyzing semistability and the splitting type of vector bundles over an elliptic curve given as the sheaf cohomology of a monad.Comment: 40 pages, no figures; minor cosmetic reorganization of section 4; reference [6] update