29,609 research outputs found
Stress-Induced Phase Transformations in Shape-Memory Polycrystals
Shape-memory alloys undergo a solid-to-solid phase transformation involving a change of crystal structure. We examine model problems in the scalar setting motivated by the situation when this transformation is induced by the application of stress in a polycrystalline material made of numerous grains of the same crystalline solid with varying orientations. We show that the onset of transformation in a granular polycrystal with homogeneous elasticity is in fact predicted accurately by the so-called Sachs bound based on the ansatz of uniform stress. We also present a simple example where the onset of phase transformation is given by the Sachs bound, and the extent of phase transformation is given by the constant strain Taylor bound. Finally we discuss the stressâstrain relations of the general problem using MiltonâSerkov bounds
Tight bounds on the maximum size of a set of permutations with bounded VC-dimension
The VC-dimension of a family P of n-permutations is the largest integer k
such that the set of restrictions of the permutations in P on some k-tuple of
positions is the set of all k! permutation patterns. Let r_k(n) be the maximum
size of a set of n-permutations with VC-dimension k. Raz showed that r_2(n)
grows exponentially in n. We show that r_3(n)=2^Theta(n log(alpha(n))) and for
every s >= 4, we have almost tight upper and lower bounds of the form 2^{n
poly(alpha(n))}. We also study the maximum number p_k(n) of 1-entries in an n x
n (0,1)-matrix with no (k+1)-tuple of columns containing all (k+1)-permutation
matrices. We determine that p_3(n) = Theta(n alpha(n)) and that p_s(n) can be
bounded by functions of the form n 2^poly(alpha(n)) for every fixed s >= 4. We
also show that for every positive s there is a slowly growing function
zeta_s(m) (of the form 2^poly(alpha(m)) for every fixed s >= 5) satisfying the
following. For all positive integers n and B and every n x n (0,1)-matrix M
with zeta_s(n)Bn 1-entries, the rows of M can be partitioned into s intervals
so that at least B columns contain at least B 1-entries in each of the
intervals.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figures, correction of the bound on r_3 in the abstract
and other minor change
Improved bounds and new techniques for Davenport-Schinzel sequences and their generalizations
Let lambda_s(n) denote the maximum length of a Davenport-Schinzel sequence of
order s on n symbols. For s=3 it is known that lambda_3(n) = Theta(n alpha(n))
(Hart and Sharir, 1986). For general s>=4 there are almost-tight upper and
lower bounds, both of the form n * 2^poly(alpha(n)) (Agarwal, Sharir, and Shor,
1989). Our first result is an improvement of the upper-bound technique of
Agarwal et al. We obtain improved upper bounds for s>=6, which are tight for
even s up to lower-order terms in the exponent. More importantly, we also
present a new technique for deriving upper bounds for lambda_s(n). With this
new technique we: (1) re-derive the upper bound of lambda_3(n) <= 2n alpha(n) +
O(n sqrt alpha(n)) (first shown by Klazar, 1999); (2) re-derive our own new
upper bounds for general s; and (3) obtain improved upper bounds for the
generalized Davenport-Schinzel sequences considered by Adamec, Klazar, and
Valtr (1992). Regarding lower bounds, we show that lambda_3(n) >= 2n alpha(n) -
O(n), and therefore, the coefficient 2 is tight. We also present a simpler
version of the construction of Agarwal, Sharir, and Shor that achieves the
known lower bounds for even s>=4.Comment: To appear in Journal of the ACM. 48 pages, 3 figure
Sharp Bounds on Davenport-Schinzel Sequences of Every Order
One of the longest-standing open problems in computational geometry is to
bound the lower envelope of univariate functions, each pair of which
crosses at most times, for some fixed . This problem is known to be
equivalent to bounding the length of an order- Davenport-Schinzel sequence,
namely a sequence over an -letter alphabet that avoids alternating
subsequences of the form with length
. These sequences were introduced by Davenport and Schinzel in 1965 to
model a certain problem in differential equations and have since been applied
to bounding the running times of geometric algorithms, data structures, and the
combinatorial complexity of geometric arrangements.
Let be the maximum length of an order- DS sequence over
letters. What is asymptotically? This question has been answered
satisfactorily (by Hart and Sharir, Agarwal, Sharir, and Shor, Klazar, and
Nivasch) when is even or . However, since the work of Agarwal,
Sharir, and Shor in the mid-1980s there has been a persistent gap in our
understanding of the odd orders.
In this work we effectively close the problem by establishing sharp bounds on
Davenport-Schinzel sequences of every order . Our results reveal that,
contrary to one's intuition, behaves essentially like
when is odd. This refutes conjectures due to Alon et al.
(2008) and Nivasch (2010).Comment: A 10-page extended abstract will appear in the Proceedings of the
Symposium on Computational Geometry, 201
Froth-like minimizers of a non local free energy functional with competing interactions
We investigate the ground and low energy states of a one dimensional non
local free energy functional describing at a mean field level a spin system
with both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic interactions. In particular, the
antiferromagnetic interaction is assumed to have a range much larger than the
ferromagnetic one. The competition between these two effects is expected to
lead to the spontaneous emergence of a regular alternation of long intervals on
which the spin profile is magnetized either up or down, with an oscillation
scale intermediate between the range of the ferromagnetic and that of the
antiferromagnetic interaction. In this sense, the optimal or quasi-optimal
profiles are "froth-like": if seen on the scale of the antiferromagnetic
potential they look neutral, but if seen at the microscope they actually
consist of big bubbles of two different phases alternating among each other. In
this paper we prove the validity of this picture, we compute the oscillation
scale of the quasi-optimal profiles and we quantify their distance in norm from
a reference periodic profile. The proof consists of two main steps: we first
coarse grain the system on a scale intermediate between the range of the
ferromagnetic potential and the expected optimal oscillation scale; in this way
we reduce the original functional to an effective "sharp interface" one. Next,
we study the latter by reflection positivity methods, which require as a key
ingredient the exact locality of the short range term. Our proof has the
conceptual interest of combining coarse graining with reflection positivity
methods, an idea that is presumably useful in much more general contexts than
the one studied here.Comment: 38 pages, 2 figure
On the optimal design of wall-to-wall heat transport
We consider the problem of optimizing heat transport through an
incompressible fluid layer. Modeling passive scalar transport by
advection-diffusion, we maximize the mean rate of total transport by a
divergence-free velocity field. Subject to various boundary conditions and
intensity constraints, we prove that the maximal rate of transport scales
linearly in the r.m.s. kinetic energy and, up to possible logarithmic
corrections, as the rd power of the mean enstrophy in the advective
regime. This makes rigorous a previous prediction on the near optimality of
convection rolls for energy-constrained transport. Optimal designs for
enstrophy-constrained transport are significantly more difficult to describe:
we introduce a "branching" flow design with an unbounded number of degrees of
freedom and prove it achieves nearly optimal transport. The main technical tool
behind these results is a variational principle for evaluating the transport of
candidate designs. The principle admits dual formulations for bounding
transport from above and below. While the upper bound is closely related to the
"background method", the lower bound reveals a connection between the optimal
design problems considered herein and other apparently related model problems
from mathematical materials science. These connections serve to motivate
designs.Comment: Minor revisions from review. To appear in Comm. Pure Appl. Mat
Improved bounds on the number of ternary square-free words
Improved upper and lower bounds on the number of square-free ternary words
are obtained. The upper bound is based on the enumeration of square-free
ternary words up to length 110. The lower bound is derived by constructing
generalised Brinkhuis triples. The problem of finding such triples can
essentially be reduced to a combinatorial problem, which can efficiently be
treated by computer. In particular, it is shown that the number of square-free
ternary words of length n grows at least as 65^(n/40), replacing the previous
best lower bound of 2^(n/17).Comment: 17 pages, AMS LaTeX. Paper has been completely rewritten and
comprises new results on both lower and upper bounds. The Mathematica program
mentioned in the article can be downloaded at
http://mcs.open.ac.uk/ugg2/wordcomb/brinkhuistriples.
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