On the Geometric Interpretation of the Nonnegative Rank

The nonnegative rank of a nonnegative matrix is the minimum number of nonnegative rank-one factors needed to reconstruct it exactly. The problem of determining this rank and computing the corresponding nonnegative factors is difficult; however it has many potential applications, e.g., in data mining, graph theory and computational geometry. In particular, it can be used to characterize the minimal size of any extended reformulation of a given combinatorial optimization program. In this paper, we introduce and study a related quantity, called the restricted nonnegative rank. We show that computing this quantity is equivalent to a problem in polyhedral combinatorics, and fully characterize its computational complexity. This in turn sheds new light on the nonnegative rank problem, and in particular allows us to provide new improved lower bounds based on its geometric interpretation. We apply these results to slack matrices and linear Euclidean distance matrices and obtain counter-examples to two conjectures of Beasly and Laffey, namely we show that the nonnegative rank of linear Euclidean distance matrices is not necessarily equal to their dimension, and that the rank of a matrix is not always greater than the nonnegative rank of its square

Approximation of the Euclidean ball by polytopes with a restricted number of facets

We prove that there is an absolute constant $C$ such that for every $n \geq 2$ and $N\geq 10^n,$ there exists a polytope $P_{n,N} \subset \mathbb{R}^n$ with at most $N$ facets that satisfies $$\Delta_{v}(D_n,P_{n,N}):=\text{vol}_n\left(D_n \Delta P_{n,N}\right)\leq Cn^{-2/(n-1}\text{vol}_n\left(D_n\right)$$ and $$\Delta_{s}(D_n,P_{n,N}):=\text{vol}_{n-1}\left(\partial\left(D_n\cup P_{n,N}\right)\right) - \text{vol}_{n-1}\left(\partial\left(D_n\cap P_{n,N}\right)\right) \leq 4CN^{-\frac{2}{n-1}} \text{vol}_{n-1}\left(\partial D_n\right),$$ where $D_n$ is the $n$-dimensional Euclidean unit ball. This result closes gaps from several papers of Hoehner, Ludwig, Sch\"utt and Werner. The upper bounds are optimal up to absolute constants. This result shows that a polytope with an exponential number of facets (in the dimension) can approximate the $n$-dimensional Euclidean ball with respect to the aforementioned distances

Stochastic model for the 3D microstructure of pristine and cyclically aged cathodes in Li-ion batteries

It is well-known that the microstructure of electrodes in lithium-ion batteries strongly affects their performance. Vice versa, the microstructure can exhibit strong changes during the usage of the battery due to aging effects. For a better understanding of these effects, mathematical analysis and modeling has turned out to be of great help. In particular, stochastic 3D microstructure models have proven to be a powerful and very flexible tool to generate various kinds of particle-based structures. Recently, such models have been proposed for the microstructure of anodes in lithium-ion energy and power cells. In the present paper, we describe a stochastic modeling approach for the 3D microstructure of cathodes in a lithium-ion energy cell, which differs significantly from the one observed in anodes. The model for the cathode data enhances the ideas of the anode models, which have been developed so far. It is calibrated using 3D tomographic image data from pristine as well as two aged cathodes. A validation based on morphological image characteristics shows that the model is able to realistically describe both, the microstructure of pristine and aged cathodes. Thus, we conclude that the model is suitable to generate virtual, but realistic microstructures of lithium-ion cathodes

Elliptic and K-theoretic stable envelopes and Newton polytopes

In this paper we consider the cotangent bundles of partial flag varieties. We construct the $K$-theoretic stable envelopes for them and also define a version of the elliptic stable envelopes. We expect that our elliptic stable envelopes coincide with the elliptic stable envelopes defined by M. Aganagic and A. Okounkov. We give formulas for the $K$-theoretic stable envelopes and our elliptic stable envelopes. We show that the $K$-theoretic stable envelopes are suitable limits of our elliptic stable envelopes. That phenomenon was predicted by M. Aganagic and A. Okounkov. Our stable envelopes are constructed in terms of the elliptic and trigonometric weight functions which originally appeared in the theory of integral representations of solutions of qKZ equations twenty years ago. (More precisely, the elliptic weight functions had appeared earlier only for the $\frak{gl}_2$ case.) We prove new properties of the trigonometric weight functions. Namely, we consider certain evaluations of the trigonometric weight functions, which are multivariable Laurent polynomials, and show that the Newton polytopes of the evaluations are embedded in the Newton polytopes of the corresponding diagonal evaluations. That property implies the fact that the trigonometric weight functions project to the $K$-theoretic stable envelopes.Comment: Latex, 37 pages; v.2: Appendix and Figure 1 added; v.3: missing shift in Theorem 2.9 added and a proof of Theorem 2.9 adde