Harmonic Manifolds and the Volume of Tubes about Curves

H. Hotelling proved that in the n-dimensional Euclidean or spherical space, the volume of a tube of small radius about a curve depends only on the length of the curve and the radius. A. Gray and L. Vanhecke extended Hotelling's theorem to rank one symmetric spaces computing the volumes of the tubes explicitly in these spaces. In the present paper, we generalize these results by showing that every harmonic manifold has the above tube property. We compute the volume of tubes in the Damek-Ricci spaces. We show that if a Riemannian manifold has the tube property, then it is a 2-stein D'Atri space. We also prove that a symmetric space has the tube property if and only if it is harmonic. Our results answer some questions posed by L. Vanhecke, T. J. Willmore, and G. Thorbergsson.Comment: 17 pages, no figures. This version is different from the journal versio

Range descriptions for the spherical mean Radon transform

The transform considered in the paper averages a function supported in a ball in \RR^n over all spheres centered at the boundary of the ball. This Radon type transform arises in several contemporary applications, e.g. in thermoacoustic tomography and sonar and radar imaging. Range descriptions for such transforms are important in all these areas, for instance when dealing with incomplete data, error correction, and other issues. Four different types of complete range descriptions are provided, some of which also suggest inversion procedures. Necessity of three of these (appropriately formulated) conditions holds also in general domains, while the complete discussion of the case of general domains would require another publication.Comment: LATEX file, 55 pages, two EPS figure

Generalized Skein Modules of Surfaces

Frobenius extensions play a central role in the link homology theories based upon the sl(n) link variants, and each of these Frobenius extensions may be recast geometrically via a category of marked cobordisms in the manner of Bar-Natan. Here we explore a large family of such marked cobordism categories that are relevant to generalized sl(n) link homology theories. We also investigate the skein modules that result from embedding these marked cobordisms within 3-manifolds, and arrive at an explicit presentation for several of these generalized skein modules.Comment: 23 pages, multiple figure

Counting generalized Reed-Solomon codes

In this article we count the number of generalized Reed-Solomon (GRS) codes of dimension k and length n, including the codes coming from a non-degenerate conic plus nucleus. We compare our results with known formulae for the number of 3-dimensional MDS codes of length n=6,7,8,9

Orthosymplectically invariant functions in superspace

The notion of spherically symmetric superfunctions as functions invariant under the orthosymplectic group is introduced. This leads to dimensional reduction theorems for differentiation and integration in superspace. These spherically symmetric functions can be used to solve orthosymplectically invariant Schroedinger equations in superspace, such as the (an)harmonic oscillator or the Kepler problem. Finally the obtained machinery is used to prove the Funk-Hecke theorem and Bochner's relations in superspace.Comment: J. Math. Phy