Quantum Dilaton Gravity in Two Dimensions with Fermionic Matter

Path integral quantization of generic two-dimensional dilaton gravity non-minimally coupled to a Dirac fermion is performed. After integrating out geometry exactly, perturbation theory is employed in the matter sector to derive the lowest order gravitational vertices. Consistency with the case of scalar matter is found and issues of relevance for bosonisation are pointed out.Comment: 27 pages, 3 figures, v2: final version, added references, sec. 2 partially rewritten, some amendments, to be published in Class. Quant. Gra

A probabilistic weak formulation of mean field games and applications

Mean field games are studied by means of the weak formulation of stochastic optimal control. This approach allows the mean field interactions to enter through both state and control processes and take a form which is general enough to include rank and nearest-neighbor effects. Moreover, the data may depend discontinuously on the state variable, and more generally its entire history. Existence and uniqueness results are proven, along with a procedure for identifying and constructing distributed strategies which provide approximate Nash equlibria for finite-player games. Our results are applied to a new class of multi-agent price impact models and a class of flocking models for which we prove existence of equilibria

Ramifications of Lineland

A non-technical overview on gravity in two dimensions is provided. Applications discussed in this work comprise 2D type 0A/0B string theory, Black Hole evaporation/thermodynamics, toy models for quantum gravity, for numerical General Relativity in the context of critical collapse and for solid state analogues of Black Holes. Mathematical relations to integrable models, non-linear gauge theories, Poisson-sigma models, KdV surfaces and non-commutative geometry are presented.Comment: 45 pages, 3 eps figures, proceedings contribution to 5th Workshop on Quantization, Dualities & Integrable Systems in Denizli, Turkey; v2: added refs. and a comment on phase transitions: v3: minor cosmetic chang

Mean field games with common noise

A theory of existence and uniqueness is developed for general stochastic differential mean field games with common noise. The concepts of strong and weak solutions are introduced in analogy with the theory of stochastic differential equations, and existence of weak solutions for mean field games is shown to hold under very general assumptions. Examples and counter-examples are provided to enlighten the underpinnings of the existence theory. Finally, an analog of the famous result of Yamada and Watanabe is derived, and it is used to prove existence and uniqueness of a strong solution under additional assumptions

Scalable Sparse Subspace Clustering by Orthogonal Matching Pursuit

Subspace clustering methods based on $\ell_1$, $\ell_2$ or nuclear norm regularization have become very popular due to their simplicity, theoretical guarantees and empirical success. However, the choice of the regularizer can greatly impact both theory and practice. For instance, $\ell_1$ regularization is guaranteed to give a subspace-preserving affinity (i.e., there are no connections between points from different subspaces) under broad conditions (e.g., arbitrary subspaces and corrupted data). However, it requires solving a large scale convex optimization problem. On the other hand, $\ell_2$ and nuclear norm regularization provide efficient closed form solutions, but require very strong assumptions to guarantee a subspace-preserving affinity, e.g., independent subspaces and uncorrupted data. In this paper we study a subspace clustering method based on orthogonal matching pursuit. We show that the method is both computationally efficient and guaranteed to give a subspace-preserving affinity under broad conditions. Experiments on synthetic data verify our theoretical analysis, and applications in handwritten digit and face clustering show that our approach achieves the best trade off between accuracy and efficiency.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure, 2 tables. Accepted to CVPR 2016 as an oral presentatio

Transversal interface dynamics of a front connecting a stripe pattern to a uniform state

Interfaces in two-dimensional systems exhibit unexpected complex dynamical behaviors, the dynamics of a border connecting a stripe pattern and a uniform state is studied. Numerical simulations of a prototype isotropic model, the subcritical Swift-Hohenberg equation, show that this interface has transversal spatial periodic structures, zigzag dynamics and complex coarsening process. Close to a spatial bifurcation, an amended amplitude equation and a one-dimensional interface model allow us to characterize the dynamics exhibited by this interface.Comment: 4 pages. To be published in Europhysics Letter

Black Hole Thermodynamics and Hamilton-Jacobi Counterterm

We review the construction of the universal Hamilton-Jacobi counterterm for dilaton gravity in two dimensions, derive the corresponding result in the Cartan formulation and elaborate further upon black hole thermodynamics and semi-classical corrections. Applications include spherically symmetric black holes in arbitrary dimensions with Minkowski- or AdS-asymptotics, the BTZ black hole and black holes in two-dimensional string theory.Comment: 9 pages, proceedings contribution to QFEXT07 submitted to IJMPA, v2: added Re

One-Loop Calculations and Detailed Analysis of the Localized Non-Commutative 1/p**2 U(1) Gauge Model

This paper carries forward a series of articles describing our enterprise to construct a gauge equivalent for the $\theta$-deformed non-commutative $p^{-2}$ model originally introduced by Gurau et al. arXiv:0802.0791. It is shown that breaking terms of the form used by Vilar et al. arXiv:0902.2956 and ourselves arXiv:0901.1681 to localize the BRST covariant operator $(D^2\theta^2D^2)^{-1}$ lead to difficulties concerning renormalization. The reason is that this dimensionless operator is invariant with respect to any symmetry of the model, and can be inserted to arbitrary power. In the present article we discuss explicit one-loop calculations, and analyze the mechanism the mentioned problems originate from.Comment: v2: minor corrections and references added; v3: published versio