Vector bundles on curves and generalized theta functions: recent results and open problems

Riemann surface carries a natural line bundle, the determinant bundle. The space of sections of this line bundle (or its multiples) constitutes a natural non-abelian generalization of the spaces of theta functions on the Jacobian. There has been much progress in the last few years towards a better understanding of these spaces, including a rigorous proof of the celebrated Verlinde formula which gives their dimension. This survey paper tries to explain what is now known and what remains open.Comment: 15 pages, Plain Te

Decision Making for Rapid Information Acquisition in the Reconnaissance of Random Fields

Research into several aspects of robot-enabled reconnaissance of random fields is reported. The work has two major components: the underlying theory of information acquisition in the exploration of unknown fields and the results of experiments on how humans use sensor-equipped robots to perform a simulated reconnaissance exercise. The theoretical framework reported herein extends work on robotic exploration that has been reported by ourselves and others. Several new figures of merit for evaluating exploration strategies are proposed and compared. Using concepts from differential topology and information theory, we develop the theoretical foundation of search strategies aimed at rapid discovery of topological features (locations of critical points and critical level sets) of a priori unknown differentiable random fields. The theory enables study of efficient reconnaissance strategies in which the tradeoff between speed and accuracy can be understood. The proposed approach to rapid discovery of topological features has led in a natural way to to the creation of parsimonious reconnaissance routines that do not rely on any prior knowledge of the environment. The design of topology-guided search protocols uses a mathematical framework that quantifies the relationship between what is discovered and what remains to be discovered. The quantification rests on an information theory inspired model whose properties allow us to treat search as a problem in optimal information acquisition. A central theme in this approach is that "conservative" and "aggressive" search strategies can be precisely defined, and search decisions regarding "exploration" vs. "exploitation" choices are informed by the rate at which the information metric is changing.Comment: 34 pages, 20 figure

The Yangian Symmetry of the Hubbard Models with Variable Range Hopping

We present two pairs of Y($sl_2$) Yangian symmetries for the trigonometric and hyperbolic versions of the Hubbard model with non-nearest-neighbour hopping. In both cases the Yangians are mutually commuting, hence can be combined into a Y($sl_2$)$\oplus$Y($sl_2$) Yangian. Their mutual commutativity is of dynamical origin. The known Yangians of the Haldane-Shastry spin chain and the nearest neighbour Hubbard model are contained as limiting cases of our new representations.Comment: 10 pages, Late

Real-valued, time-periodic localized weak solutions for a semilinear wave equation with periodic potentials

We consider the semilinear wave equation $V(x) u_{tt} -u_{xx}+q(x)u = \pm f(x,u)$ for three different classes (P1), (P2), (P3) of periodic potentials $V,q$. (P1) consists of periodically extended delta-distributions, (P2) of periodic step potentials and (P3) contains certain periodic potentials V,q\in H^r_{\per}(\R) for $r\in [1,3/2)$. Among other assumptions we suppose that $|f(x,s)|\leq c(1+ |s|^p)$ for some $c>0$ and $p>1$. In each class we can find suitable potentials that give rise to a critical exponent $p^\ast$ such that for $p\in (1,p^\ast)$ both in the "+" and the "-" case we can use variational methods to prove existence of time-periodic real-valued solutions that are localized in the space direction. The potentials are constructed explicitely in class (P1) and (P2) and are found by a recent result from inverse spectral theory in class (P3). The critical exponent $p^\ast$ depends on the regularity of $V, q$. Our result builds upon a Fourier expansion of the solution and a detailed analysis of the spectrum of the wave operator. In fact, it turns out that by a careful choice of the potentials and the spatial and temporal periods, the spectrum of the wave operator $V(x)\partial_t^2-\partial_x^2+q(x)$ (considered on suitable space of time-periodic functions) is bounded away from $0$. This allows to find weak solutions as critical points of a functional on a suitable Hilbert space and to apply tools for strongly indefinite variational problems

Large sets of consecutive Maass forms and fluctuations in the Weyl remainder

We explore an algorithm which systematically finds all discrete eigenvalues of an analytic eigenvalue problem. The algorithm is more simple and elementary as could be expected before. It consists of Hejhal's identity, linearisation, and Turing bounds. Using the algorithm, we compute more than one hundredsixty thousand consecutive eigenvalues of the Laplacian on the modular surface, and investigate the asymptotic and statistic properties of the fluctuations in the Weyl remainder. We summarize the findings in two conjectures. One is on the maximum size of the Weyl remainder, and the other is on the distribution of a suitably scaled version of the Weyl remainder.Comment: A version with higher resolution figures can be downloaded from http://www.maths.bris.ac.uk/~mahlt/research/T2012a.pd

From quantum stochastic differential equations to Gisin-Percival state diffusion

Starting from the quantum stochastic differential equations of Hudson and Parthasarathy (Comm. Math. Phys. 93, 301 (1984)) and exploiting the Wiener-Ito-Segal isomorphism between the Boson Fock reservoir space $\Gamma(L^2(\mathbb{R}_+)\otimes (\mathbb{C}^{n}\oplus \mathbb{C}^{n}))$ and the Hilbert space $L^2(\mu)$, where $\mu$ is the Wiener probability measure of a complex $n$-dimensional vector-valued standard Brownian motion $\{\mathbf{B}(t), t\geq 0\}$, we derive a non-linear stochastic Schrodinger equation describing a classical diffusion of states of a quantum system, driven by the Brownian motion $\mathbf{B}$. Changing this Brownian motion by an appropriate Girsanov transformation, we arrive at the Gisin-Percival state diffusion equation (J. Phys. A, 167, 315 (1992)). This approach also yields an explicit solution of the Gisin-Percival equation, in terms of the Hudson-Parthasarathy unitary process and a radomized Weyl displacement process. Irreversible dynamics of system density operators described by the well-known Gorini-Kossakowski-Sudarshan-Lindblad master equation is unraveled by coarse-graining over the Gisin-Percival quantum state trajectories.Comment: 28 pages, one pdf figure. An error in the multiplying factor in Eq. (102) corrected. To appear in Journal of Mathematical Physic