Homology representations arising from the half cube, II

In a previous work (arXiv:0806.1503v2), we defined a family of subcomplexes of the $n$-dimensional half cube by removing the interiors of all half cube shaped faces of dimension at least $k$, and we proved that the homology of such a subcomplex is concentrated in degree $k-1$. This homology group supports a natural action of the Coxeter group $W(D_n)$ of type $D$. In this paper, we explicitly determine the characters (over ${\Bbb C}$) of these homology representations, which turn out to be multiplicity free. Regarded as representations of the symmetric group $S_n$ by restriction, the homology representations turn out to be direct sums of certain representations induced from parabolic subgroups. The latter representations of \sym_n agree (over ${\Bbb C}$) with the representations of \sym_n on the $(k-2)$-nd homology of the complement of the $k$-equal real hyperplane arrangement.Comment: 19 pages AMSTeX. One figure. The Conjecture in the previous version is now a Theorem. This research was supported by NSF grant DMS-090576

Geometrical Frustration and Static Correlations in Hard-Sphere Glass Formers

We analytically and numerically characterize the structure of hard-sphere fluids in order to review various geometrical frustration scenarios of the glass transition. We find generalized polytetrahedral order to be correlated with increasing fluid packing fraction, but to become increasingly irrelevant with increasing dimension. We also find the growth in structural correlations to be modest in the dynamical regime accessible to computer simulations.Comment: 21 pages; part of the "Special Topic Issue on the Glass Transition

K-area, Hofer metric and geometry of conjugacy classes in Lie groups

Given a closed symplectic manifold $(M,\omega)$ we introduce a certain quantity associated to a tuple of conjugacy classes in the universal cover of the group ${\hbox{\it Ham}} (M,\omega)$ by means of the Hofer metric on ${\hbox{\it Ham}} (M,\omega)$. We use pseudo-holomorphic curves involved in the definition of the multiplicative structure on the Floer cohomology of a symplectic manifold $(M,\omega)$ to estimate this quantity in terms of actions of some periodic orbits of related Hamiltonian flows. As a corollary we get a new way to obtain Agnihotri-Belkale-Woodward inequalities for eigenvalues of products of unitary matrices. As another corollary we get a new proof of the geodesic property (with respect to the Hofer metric) of Hamiltonian flows generated by certain autonomous Hamiltonians. Our main technical tool is K-area defined for Hamiltonian fibrations over a surface with boundary in the spirit of L.Polterovich's work on Hamiltonian fibrations over $S^2$.Comment: Corrected final version, accepted for publication in Inventiones Mathematica