Minimal classes of graphs of unbounded clique-width defined by finitely many forbidden induced subgraphs

We discover new hereditary classes of graphs that are minimal (with respect to set inclusion) of unbounded clique-width. The new examples include split permutation graphs and bichain graphs. Each of these classes is characterised by a finite list of minimal forbidden induced subgraphs. These, therefore, disprove a conjecture due to Daligault, Rao and Thomasse from 2010 claiming that all such minimal classes must be defined by infinitely many forbidden induced subgraphs. In the same paper, Daligault, Rao and Thomasse make another conjecture that every hereditary class of unbounded clique-width must contain a labelled infinite antichain. We show that the two example classes we consider here satisfy this conjecture. Indeed, they each contain a canonical labelled infinite antichain, which leads us to propose a stronger conjecture: that every hereditary class of graphs that is minimal of unbounded clique-width contains a canonical labelled infinite antichain.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figure

Towards a theory of local Shimura varieties

This is a survey article that advertizes the idea that there should exist a theory of p-adic local analogues of Shimura varieties. Prime examples are the towers of rigid-analytic spaces defined by Rapoport-Zink spaces, and we also review their theory in the light of this idea. We also discuss conjectures on the $\ell$-adic cohomology of local Shimura varieties.Comment: 53 page

Empirical Bayes selection of wavelet thresholds

This paper explores a class of empirical Bayes methods for level-dependent threshold selection in wavelet shrinkage. The prior considered for each wavelet coefficient is a mixture of an atom of probability at zero and a heavy-tailed density. The mixing weight, or sparsity parameter, for each level of the transform is chosen by marginal maximum likelihood. If estimation is carried out using the posterior median, this is a random thresholding procedure; the estimation can also be carried out using other thresholding rules with the same threshold. Details of the calculations needed for implementing the procedure are included. In practice, the estimates are quick to compute and there is software available. Simulations on the standard model functions show excellent performance, and applications to data drawn from various fields of application are used to explore the practical performance of the approach. By using a general result on the risk of the corresponding marginal maximum likelihood approach for a single sequence, overall bounds on the risk of the method are found subject to membership of the unknown function in one of a wide range of Besov classes, covering also the case of f of bounded variation. The rates obtained are optimal for any value of the parameter p in (0,\infty], simultaneously for a wide range of loss functions, each dominating the L_q norm of the \sigmath derivative, with \sigma\ge0 and 0<q\le2.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/009053605000000345 in the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Generating Functional in CFT on Riemann Surfaces II: Homological Aspects

We revisit and generalize our previous algebraic construction of the chiral effective action for Conformal Field Theory on higher genus Riemann surfaces. We show that the action functional can be obtained by evaluating a certain Deligne cohomology class over the fundamental class of the underlying topological surface. This Deligne class is constructed by applying a descent procedure with respect to a \v{C}ech resolution of any covering map of a Riemann surface. Detailed calculations are presented in the two cases of an ordinary \v{C}ech cover, and of the universal covering map, which was used in our previous approach. We also establish a dictionary that allows to use the same formalism for different covering morphisms. The Deligne cohomology class we obtain depends on a point in the Earle-Eells fibration over the Teichm\"uller space, and on a smooth coboundary for the Schwarzian cocycle associated to the base-point Riemann surface. From it, we obtain a variational characterization of Hubbard's universal family of projective structures, showing that the locus of critical points for the chiral action under fiberwise variation along the Earle-Eells fibration is naturally identified with the universal projective structure.Comment: Latex, xypic, and AMS packages. 53 pages, 1 figur