Dimensional Mutation and Spacelike Singularities

I argue that string theory compactified on a Riemann surface crosses over at small volume to a higher dimensional background of supercritical string theory. Several concrete measures of the count of degrees of freedom of the theory yield the consistent result that at finite volume, the effective dimensionality is increased by an amount of order $2h/V$ for a surface of genus $h$ and volume $V$ in string units. This arises in part from an exponentially growing density of states of winding modes supported by the fundamental group, and passes an interesting test of modular invariance. Further evidence for a plethora of examples with the spacelike singularity replaced by a higher dimensional phase arises from the fact that the sigma model on a Riemann surface can be naturally completed by many gauged linear sigma models, whose RG flows approximate time evolution in the full string backgrounds arising from this in the limit of large dimensionality. In recent examples of spacelike singularity resolution by tachyon condensation, the singularity is ultimately replaced by a phase with all modes becoming heavy and decoupling. In the present case, the opposite behavior ensues: more light degrees of freedom arise in the small radius regime. I comment on the emerging zoology of cosmological singularities that results.Comment: 15 pages, harvmac big. v2: 18 pages, harvmac big; added computation of density of states and modular invariance check, enhanced discussion of multiplicity of solutions all sharing the feature of increased density of states, added reference

Rationally Isomorphic Hermitian Forms and Torsors of Some Non-Reductive Groups

Let $R$ be a semilocal Dedekind domain. Under certain assumptions, we show that two (not necessarily unimodular) hermitian forms over an $R$-algebra with involution, which are rationally ismorphic and have isomorphic semisimple coradicals, are in fact isomorphic. The same result is also obtained for quadratic forms equipped with an action of a finite group. The results have cohomological restatements that resemble the Grothendieck--Serre conjecture, except the group schemes involved are not reductive. We show that these group schemes are closely related to group schemes arising in Bruhat--Tits theory.Comment: 27 pages. Changes from previous version: Section 5 was split into two sections, several proofs have been simplified, other mild modification

A new proof of a Nordgren, Rosenthal and Wintrobe Theorem on universal operators

A striking result by Nordgren, Rosenthal and Wintrobe states that the Invariant Subspace Problem is equivalent to the fact that any minimal invariant subspace for a composition operator Cφ induced by a hyperbolic automorphism φ of the unit disc D acting on the classical Hardy space H² is one dimensional. We provide a completely different proof of Nordgren, Rosenthal and Wintrobe’s Theorem based on analytic Toeplitz operators

A hyperbolic universal operator commuting with a compact operator

A Hilbert space operator is called universal (in the sense of Rota) if every operator on the Hilbert space is similar to a multiple of the restriction of the universal operator to one of its invariant subspaces. We exhibit an analytic Toeplitz operator whose adjoint is universal in the sense of Rota and commutes with a non-trivial, quasinilpotent, injective, compact operator with dense range, but unlike other examples, it acts on the Bergman space instead of the Hardy space and this operator is associated with a `hyperbolic' composition operator