Simultaneous approximation for the Phillips operators

We study the simultaneous approximation properties of the well-known Phillips operators. We establish the rate of convergence of the Phillips operators in simultaneous approximation by means of the decomposition technique for functions of bounded variation

Precision calculation of γd→π+nn\gamma d\to \pi^+ nn within chiral perturbation theory

The reaction $\gamma d\to \pi^+ nn$ is calculated up to order $\chi^{5/2}$ in chiral perturbation theory, where $\chi$ denotes the ratio of the pion to the nucleon mass. Special emphasis is put on the role of nucleon--recoil corrections that are the source of contributions with fractional power in $\chi$. Using the known near threshold production amplitude for $\gamma p\to \pi^+ n$ as the only input, the total cross section for $\gamma d\to \pi^+ nn$ is described very well. A conservative estimate suggests that the theoretical uncertainty for the transition operator amounts to 3 % for the computed amplitude near threshold.Comment: 28 page

Best possible rates of distribution of dense lattice orbits in homogeneous spaces

The present paper establishes upper and lower bounds on the speed of approximation in a wide range of natural Diophantine approximation problems. The upper and lower bounds coincide in many cases, giving rise to optimal results in Diophantine approximation which were inaccessible previously. Our approach proceeds by establishing, more generally, upper and lower bounds for the rate of distribution of dense orbits of a lattice subgroup $\Gamma$ in a connected Lie (or algebraic) group $G$, acting on suitable homogeneous spaces $G/H$. The upper bound is derived using a quantitative duality principle for homogeneous spaces, reducing it to a rate of convergence in the mean ergodic theorem for a family of averaging operators supported on $H$ and acting on $G/\Gamma$. In particular, the quality of the upper bound on the rate of distribution we obtain is determined explicitly by the spectrum of $H$ in the automorphic representation on $L^2(\Gamma\setminus G)$. We show that the rate is best possible when the representation in question is tempered, and show that the latter condition holds in a wide range of examples