386 research outputs found
Smooth bumps, a Borel theorem and partitions of smooth functions on p.c.f. fractals
We provide two methods for constructing smooth bump functions and for
smoothly cutting off smooth functions on fractals, one using a probabilistic
approach and sub-Gaussian estimates for the heat operator, and the other using
the analytic theory for p.c.f. fractals and a fixed point argument. The heat
semigroup (probabilistic) method is applicable to a more general class of
metric measure spaces with Laplacian, including certain infinitely ramified
fractals, however the cut off technique involves some loss in smoothness. From
the analytic approach we establish a Borel theorem for p.c.f. fractals, showing
that to any prescribed jet at a junction point there is a smooth function with
that jet. As a consequence we prove that on p.c.f. fractals smooth functions
may be cut off with no loss of smoothness, and thus can be smoothly decomposed
subordinate to an open cover. The latter result provides a replacement for
classical partition of unity arguments in the p.c.f. fractal setting.Comment: 26 pages. May differ slightly from published (refereed) versio
Spectral analysis on infinite Sierpinski fractafolds
A fractafold, a space that is locally modeled on a specified fractal, is the
fractal equivalent of a manifold. For compact fractafolds based on the
Sierpinski gasket, it was shown by the first author how to compute the discrete
spectrum of the Laplacian in terms of the spectrum of a finite graph Laplacian.
A similar problem was solved by the second author for the case of infinite
blowups of a Sierpinski gasket, where spectrum is pure point of infinite
multiplicity. Both works used the method of spectral decimations to obtain
explicit description of the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions. In this paper we
combine the ideas from these earlier works to obtain a description of the
spectral resolution of the Laplacian for noncompact fractafolds. Our main
abstract results enable us to obtain a completely explicit description of the
spectral resolution of the fractafold Laplacian. For some specific examples we
turn the spectral resolution into a "Plancherel formula". We also present such
a formula for the graph Laplacian on the 3-regular tree, which appears to be a
new result of independent interest. In the end we discuss periodic fractafolds
and fractal fields
A Non-Riemannian Metric on Space-Time Emergent From Scalar Quantum Field Theory
We show that the two-point function
\sigma(x,x')=\sqrt{} of a scalar quantum field theory
is a metric (i.e., a symmetric positive function satisfying the triangle
inequality) on space-time (with imaginary time). It is very different from the
Euclidean metric |x-x'| at large distances, yet agrees with it at short
distances. For example, space-time has finite diameter which is not universal.
The Lipschitz equivalence class of the metric is independent of the cutoff.
\sigma(x,x') is not the length of the geodesic in any Riemannian metric.
Nevertheless, it is possible to embed space-time in a higher dimensional space
so that \sigma(x,x') is the length of the geodesic in the ambient space.
\sigma(x,x') should be useful in constructing the continuum limit of quantum
field theory with fundamental scalar particles
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