Next-order asymptotic expansion for N-marginal optimal transport with Coulomb and Riesz costs

Motivated by a problem arising from Density Functional Theory, we provide the sharp next-order asymptotics for a class of multimarginal optimal transport problems with cost given by singular, long-range pairwise interaction potentials. More precisely, we consider an N-marginal optimal transport problem with N equal marginals supported on Rd and with cost of the form ∑i≠j|xi−xj|−s. In this setting we determine the second-order term in the N→∞ asymptotic expansion of the minimum energy, for the long-range interactions corresponding to all exponents 0<s<d. We also prove a small oscillations property for this second-order energy term. Our results can be extended to a larger class of models than power-law-type radial costs, such as non-rotationally-invariant costs. The key ingredient and main novelty in our proofs is a robust extension and simplification of the Fefferman–Gregg decomposition [20], [26], extended here to our class of kernels, and which provides a unified method valid across our full range of exponents. Our first result generalizes a recent work of Lewin, Lieb and Seiringer [36], who dealt with the second-order term for the Coulomb case s=1,d=3

Uniqueness of gradient Gibbs measures with disorder

We consider—in a uniformly strictly convex potential regime—two versions of random gradient models with disorder. In model (A) the interface feels a bulk term of random fields while in model (B) the disorder enters through the potential acting on the gradients. We assume a general distribution on the disorder with uniformly-bounded finite second moments. It is well known that for gradient models without disorder there are no Gibbs measures in infinite volume in dimension (Formula presented.), while there are shift-invariant gradient Gibbs measures describing an infinite-volume distribution for the gradients of the field, as was shown by Funaki and Spohn (Commun Math Phys 185:1–36, 1997). Van Enter and Külske proved in (Ann Appl Probab 18(1):109–119, 2008) that adding a disorder term as in model (A) prohibits the existence of such gradient Gibbs measures for general interaction potentials in (Formula presented.). In Cotar and Külske (Ann Appl Probab 22(5):1650–1692, 2012) we proved the existence of shift-covariant random gradient Gibbs measures for model (A) when (Formula presented.), the disorder is i.i.d and has mean zero, and for model (B) when (Formula presented.) and the disorder has a stationary distribution. In the present paper, we prove existence and uniqueness of shift-covariant random gradient Gibbs measures with a given expected tilt(Formula presented.) and with the corresponding annealed measure being ergodic: for model (A) when (Formula presented.) and the disordered random fields are i.i.d. and symmetrically-distributed, and for model (B) when (Formula presented.) and for any stationary disorder-dependence structure. We also compute for both models for any gradient Gibbs measure constructed as in Cotar and Külske (Ann Appl Probab 22(5):1650–1692, 2012), when the disorder is i.i.d. and its distribution satisfies a Poincaré inequality assumption, the optimal decay of covariances with respect to the averaged-over-the-disorder gradient Gibbs measure

Smoothing of Transport Plans with Fixed Marginals and Rigorous Semiclassical Limit of the Hohenberg–Kohn Functional

We prove rigorously that the exact N-electron Hohenberg–Kohn density functional converges in the strongly interacting limit to the strictly correlated electrons (SCE) functional, and that the absolute value squared of the associated constrained search wavefunction tends weakly in the sense of probability measures to a minimizer of the multi-marginal optimal transport problem with Coulomb cost associated to the SCE functional. This extends our previous work for N = 2 (Cotar etal. in Commun Pure Appl Math 66:548–599, 2013). The correct limit problem has been derived in the physics literature by Seidl (Phys Rev A 60 4387–4395, 1999) and Seidl, Gorigiorgi and Savin (Phys Rev A 75:042511 1-12, 2007); in these papers the lack of a rigorous proofwas pointed out.We also give amathematical counterexample to this type of result, by replacing the constraint of given one-body density—an infinite dimensional quadratic expression in the wavefunction—by an infinite-dimensional quadratic expression in the wavefunction and its gradient. Connections with the Lawrentiev phenomenon in the calculus of variations are indicated

Extremal decomposition for random Gibbs measures: from general metastates to metastates on extremal random Gibbs measures

The concept of metastate measures on the states of a random spin system was introduced to be able to treat the large-volume asymptotics for complex quenched random systems, like spin glasses, which may exhibit chaotic volume dependence in the strong-coupling regime. We consider the general issue of the extremal decomposition for Gibbsian specifications which depend measurably on a parameter that may describe a whole random environment in the infinite volume. Given a random Gibbs measure, as a measurable map from the environment space, we prove measurability of its decomposition measure on pure states at fixed environment, with respect to the environment. As a general corollary we obtain that, for any metastate, there is an associated decomposition metastate, which is supported on the extremes for almost all environments, and which has the same barycenter

The K2-HERMES Survey: Age and Metallicity of the Thick Disc

Asteroseismology is a promising tool to study Galactic structure and evolution because it can probe the ages of stars. Earlier attempts comparing seismic data from the {\it Kepler} satellite with predictions from Galaxy models found that the models predicted more low-mass stars compared to the observed distribution of masses. It was unclear if the mismatch was due to inaccuracies in the Galactic models, or the unknown aspects of the selection function of the stars. Using new data from the K2 mission, which has a well-defined selection function, we find that an old metal-poor thick disc, as used in previous Galactic models, is incompatible with the asteroseismic information. We show that spectroscopic measurements of [Fe/H] and [$\alpha$/Fe] elemental abundances from the GALAH survey indicate a mean metallicity of $\log (Z/Z_{\odot})=-0.16$ for the thick disc. Here $Z$ is the effective solar-scaled metallicity, which is a function of [Fe/H] and [$\alpha$/Fe]. With the revised disc metallicities, for the first time, the theoretically predicted distribution of seismic masses show excellent agreement with the observed distribution of masses. This provides an indirect verification of the asteroseismic mass scaling relation is good to within five percent. Using an importance-sampling framework that takes the selection function into account, we fit a population synthesis model of the Galaxy to the observed seismic and spectroscopic data. Assuming the asteroseismic scaling relations are correct, we estimate the mean age of the thick disc to be about 10 Gyr, in agreement with the traditional idea of an old $\alpha$-enhanced thick disc.Comment: 21 pages, submitted to MNRA

The GALAH survey: a catalogue of carbon-enhanced stars and CEMP candidates

Swan bands - characteristic molecular absorption features of the C$_2$ molecule - are a spectroscopic signature of carbon-enhanced stars. They can also be used to identify carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars. The GALAH (GALactic Archaeology with Hermes) is a magnitude-limited survey of stars producing high-resolution, high signal-to-noise spectra. We used 627,708 GALAH spectra to search for carbon-enhanced stars with a supervised and unsupervised classification algorithm, relying on the imprint of the Swan bands. We identified 918 carbon-enhanced stars, including 12 already described in the literature. An unbiased selection function of the GALAH survey allows us to perform a population study of carbon-enhanced stars. Most of them are giants, out of which we find 28 CEMP candidates. A large fraction of our carbon-enhanced stars with repeated observations show variation in radial velocity, hinting that there is a large fraction of variables among them. 32 of the detected stars also show strong Lithium enhancement in their spectra.Comment: 13+5 pages, 13 figures, 1 catalog, accepted to MNRA