53 research outputs found
Geometric properties of curves defined over number fields
The article contains a detailed proof of the famous Belyi theorem on geometry of complex algebraic curves defined over number fields. It also includes the discussion of several constructions and conjectures inspired by Belyi’s result which where brought up by the first author during his colloquium talks at different universities within the period from 1979 to 1984
Level structures on the Weierstrass family of cubics
Let W -> A^2 be the universal Weierstrass family of cubic curves over C. For
each N >= 2, we construct surfaces parametrizing the three standard kinds of
level N structures on the smooth fibers of W. We then complete these surfaces
to finite covers of A^2. Since W -> A^2 is the versal deformation space of a
cusp singularity, these surfaces convey information about the level structure
on any family of curves of genus g degenerating to a cuspidal curve. Our goal
in this note is to determine for which values of N these surfaces are smooth
over (0,0). From a topological perspective, the results determine the
homeomorphism type of certain branched covers of S^3 with monodromy in
SL_2(Z/N).Comment: LaTeX, 12 pages; added section giving a topological interpretation of
the result
Homotopy Theory of Strong and Weak Topological Insulators
We use homotopy theory to extend the notion of strong and weak topological
insulators to the non-stable regime (low numbers of occupied/empty energy
bands). We show that for strong topological insulators in d spatial dimensions
to be "truly d-dimensional", i.e. not realizable by stacking lower-dimensional
insulators, a more restrictive definition of "strong" is required. However,
this does not exclude weak topological insulators from being "truly
d-dimensional", which we demonstrate by an example. Additionally, we prove some
useful technical results, including the homotopy theoretic derivation of the
factorization of invariants over the torus into invariants over spheres in the
stable regime, as well as the rigorous justification of replacing by
and by as is common in the current
literature.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure
Flip Distance Between Triangulations of a Simple Polygon is NP-Complete
Let T be a triangulation of a simple polygon. A flip in T is the operation of
removing one diagonal of T and adding a different one such that the resulting
graph is again a triangulation. The flip distance between two triangulations is
the smallest number of flips required to transform one triangulation into the
other. For the special case of convex polygons, the problem of determining the
shortest flip distance between two triangulations is equivalent to determining
the rotation distance between two binary trees, a central problem which is
still open after over 25 years of intensive study. We show that computing the
flip distance between two triangulations of a simple polygon is NP-complete.
This complements a recent result that shows APX-hardness of determining the
flip distance between two triangulations of a planar point set.Comment: Accepted versio
The Elliptic curves in gauge theory, string theory, and cohomology
Elliptic curves play a natural and important role in elliptic cohomology. In
earlier work with I. Kriz, thes elliptic curves were interpreted physically in
two ways: as corresponding to the intersection of M2 and M5 in the context of
(the reduction of M-theory to) type IIA and as the elliptic fiber leading to
F-theory for type IIB. In this paper we elaborate on the physical setting for
various generalized cohomology theories, including elliptic cohomology, and we
note that the above two seemingly unrelated descriptions can be unified using
Sen's picture of the orientifold limit of F-theory compactification on K3,
which unifies the Seiberg-Witten curve with the F-theory curve, and through
which we naturally explain the constancy of the modulus that emerges from
elliptic cohomology. This also clarifies the orbifolding performed in the
previous work and justifies the appearance of the w_4 condition in the elliptic
refinement of the mod 2 part of the partition function. We comment on the
cohomology theory needed for the case when the modular parameter varies in the
base of the elliptic fibration.Comment: 23 pages, typos corrected, minor clarification
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