Topological arguments for Kolmogorov complexity

We present several application of simple topological arguments in problems of Kolmogorov complexity. Basically we use the standard fact from topology that the disk is simply connected. It proves to be enough to construct strings with some nontrivial algorithmic properties.Comment: Extended versio

Random semicomputable reals revisited

The aim of this expository paper is to present a nice series of results, obtained in the papers of Chaitin (1976), Solovay (1975), Calude et al. (1998), Kucera and Slaman (2001). This joint effort led to a full characterization of lower semicomputable random reals, both as those that can be expressed as a "Chaitin Omega" and those that are maximal for the Solovay reducibility. The original proofs were somewhat involved; in this paper, we present these results in an elementary way, in particular requiring only basic knowledge of algorithmic randomness. We add also several simple observations relating lower semicomputable random reals and busy beaver functions.Comment: 15 page

Quantum geometry of moduli spaces of local systems and representation theory

Let G be a split semi-simple adjoint group, and S an oriented surface with punctures and special boundary points. We introduce a moduli space P(G,S) parametrizing G-local system on S with some boundary data, and prove that it carries a cluster Poisson structure, equivariant under the action of the cluster modular group M(G,S), containing the mapping class group of S, the group of outer automorphisms of G, and the product of Weyl / braid groups over punctures / boundary components. We prove that the dual moduli space A(G,S) carries a M(G,S)-equivariant cluster structure, and the pair (A(G,S), P(G,S)) is a cluster ensemble. These results generalize the works of V. Fock & the first author, and of I. Le. We quantize cluster Poisson varieties X for any Planck constant h s.t. h>0 or |h|=1. First, we define a *-algebra structure on the Langlands modular double A(h; X) of the algebra of functions on X. We construct a principal series of representations of the *-algebra A(h; X), equivariant under a unitary projective representation of the cluster modular group M(X). This extends works of V. Fock and the first author when h>0. Combining this, we get a M(G,S)-equivariant quantization of the moduli space P(G,S), given by the *-algebra A(h; P(G,S)) and its principal series representations. We construct realizations of the principal series *-representations. In particular, when S is punctured disc with two special points, we get a principal series *-representations of the Langlands modular double of the quantum group Uq(g). We conjecture that there is a nondegenerate pairing between the local system of coinvariants of oscillatory representations of the W-algebra and the one provided by the projective representation of the mapping class group of S.Comment: 199 pages. Minor correction

Dynamic Variational Autoencoders for Visual Process Modeling

This work studies the problem of modeling visual processes by leveraging deep generative architectures for learning linear, Gaussian representations from observed sequences. We propose a joint learning framework, combining a vector autoregressive model and Variational Autoencoders. This results in an architecture that allows Variational Autoencoders to simultaneously learn a non-linear observation as well as a linear state model from sequences of frames. We validate our approach on artificial sequences and dynamic textures

K-trivial, K-low and MLR-low sequences: a tutorial

A remarkable achievement in algorithmic randomness and algorithmic information theory was the discovery of the notions of K-trivial, K-low and Martin-Lof-random-low sets: three different definitions turns out to be equivalent for very non-trivial reasons. This paper, based on the course taught by one of the authors (L.B.) in Poncelet laboratory (CNRS, Moscow) in 2014, provides an exposition of the proof of this equivalence and some related results. We assume that the reader is familiar with basic notions of algorithmic information theory.Comment: 25 page