Smooth Parametrizations in Dynamics, Analysis, Diophantine and Computational Geometry

Smooth parametrization consists in a subdivision of the mathematical objects under consideration into simple pieces, and then parametric representation of each piece, while keeping control of high order derivatives. The main goal of the present paper is to provide a short overview of some results and open problems on smooth parametrization and its applications in several apparently rather separated domains: Smooth Dynamics, Diophantine Geometry, Approximation Theory, and Computational Geometry. The structure of the results, open problems, and conjectures in each of these domains shows in many cases a remarkable similarity, which we try to stress. Sometimes this similarity can be easily explained, sometimes the reasons remain somewhat obscure, and it motivates some natural questions discussed in the paper. We present also some new results, stressing interconnection between various types and various applications of smooth parametrization

On the complexity of nonlinear mixed-integer optimization

This is a survey on the computational complexity of nonlinear mixed-integer optimization. It highlights a selection of important topics, ranging from incomputability results that arise from number theory and logic, to recently obtained fully polynomial time approximation schemes in fixed dimension, and to strongly polynomial-time algorithms for special cases.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figures; to appear in: Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Optimization, IMA Volumes, Springer-Verla

Polynomial Size Analysis of First-Order Shapely Functions

We present a size-aware type system for first-order shapely function definitions. Here, a function definition is called shapely when the size of the result is determined exactly by a polynomial in the sizes of the arguments. Examples of shapely function definitions may be implementations of matrix multiplication and the Cartesian product of two lists. The type system is proved to be sound w.r.t. the operational semantics of the language. The type checking problem is shown to be undecidable in general. We define a natural syntactic restriction such that the type checking becomes decidable, even though size polynomials are not necessarily linear or monotonic. Furthermore, we have shown that the type-inference problem is at least semi-decidable (under this restriction). We have implemented a procedure that combines run-time testing and type-checking to automatically obtain size dependencies. It terminates on total typable function definitions.Comment: 35 pages, 1 figur

Purely exponential parametrizations and their group-theoretic applications

This paper is mainly motivated by the analysis of the so-called Bounded Generation property (BG) of linear groups (in characteristic $0$), which is known to admit far-reaching group-theoretic implications. We achieve complete answers to certain longstanding open questions about Bounded Generation (sharpening considerably some earlier results). For instance, we prove that linear groups boundedly generated by semi-simple elements are necessarily virtually abelian. This is obtained as a corollary of sparseness of subsets which are likewise generated. In the paper in fact we go further, framing (BG) in the more general context of (Purely) Exponential Parametrizations (PEP) for subsets of affine spaces, a concept which unifies different issues. Using deep tools from Diophantine Geometry (including the Subspace Theorem), we systematically develop a theory showing in particular that for a (PEP) set over a number field, the asymptotic distribution of its points of Height at most $T$ is always $\sim c(\log T)^r$, with certain constants $c>0$ and $r\in \mathbb{Z}_{\geq 0}$. (This shape fits with a well-known viewpoint first put forward by Manin.