On periodic homeomorphisms of spheres

The purpose of this paper is to study how small orbits of periodic homemorphisms of spheres can be.Comment: Published by Algebraic and Geometric Topology at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/agt/AGTVol1/agt-1-22.abs.htm

Clustering, Hamming Embedding, Generalized LSH and the Max Norm

We study the convex relaxation of clustering and hamming embedding, focusing on the asymmetric case (co-clustering and asymmetric hamming embedding), understanding their relationship to LSH as studied by (Charikar 2002) and to the max-norm ball, and the differences between their symmetric and asymmetric versions.Comment: 17 page

Helly-Type Theorems in Property Testing

Helly's theorem is a fundamental result in discrete geometry, describing the ways in which convex sets intersect with each other. If $S$ is a set of $n$ points in $R^d$, we say that $S$ is $(k,G)$-clusterable if it can be partitioned into $k$ clusters (subsets) such that each cluster can be contained in a translated copy of a geometric object $G$. In this paper, as an application of Helly's theorem, by taking a constant size sample from $S$, we present a testing algorithm for $(k,G)$-clustering, i.e., to distinguish between two cases: when $S$ is $(k,G)$-clusterable, and when it is $\epsilon$-far from being $(k,G)$-clusterable. A set $S$ is $\epsilon$-far $(0<\epsilon\leq1)$ from being $(k,G)$-clusterable if at least $\epsilon n$ points need to be removed from $S$ to make it $(k,G)$-clusterable. We solve this problem for $k=1$ and when $G$ is a symmetric convex object. For $k>1$, we solve a weaker version of this problem. Finally, as an application of our testing result, in clustering with outliers, we show that one can find the approximate clusters by querying a constant size sample, with high probability

SCD Patterns Have Singular Diffraction

Among the many families of nonperiodic tilings known so far, SCD tilings are still a bit mysterious. Here, we determine the diffraction spectra of point sets derived from SCD tilings and show that they have no absolutely continuous part, that they have a uniformly discrete pure point part on the z-axis, and that they are otherwise supported on a set of concentric cylinder surfaces around this axis. For SCD tilings with additional properties, more detailed results are given.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures; Accepted for Journal of Mathematical Physic

The local atomic quasicrystal structure of the icosahedral Mg25Y11Zn64 alloy

A local and medium range atomic structure model for the face centred icosahedral (fci) Mg25Y11Zn64 alloy has been established in a sphere of r = 27 A. The model was refined by least squares techniques using the atomic pair distribution (PDF) function obtained from synchrotron powder diffraction. Three hierarchies of the atomic arrangement can be found: (i) five types of local coordination polyhedra for the single atoms, four of which are of Frank-Kasper type. In turn, they (ii) form a three-shell (Bergman) cluster containing 104 atoms, which is condensed sharing its outer shell with its neighbouring clusters and (iii) a cluster connecting scheme corresponding to a three-dimensional tiling leaving space for few glue atoms. Inside adjacent clusters, Y8-cubes are tilted with respect to each other and thus allow for overall icosahedral symmetry. It is shown that the title compound is essentially isomorphic to its holmium analogue. Therefore fci-Mg-Y-Zn can be seen as the representative structure type for the other rare earth analogues fci-Mg-Zn-RE (RE = Dy, Er, Ho, Tb) reported in the literature.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, 2 table

Lines pinning lines

A line g is a transversal to a family F of convex polytopes in 3-dimensional space if it intersects every member of F. If, in addition, g is an isolated point of the space of line transversals to F, we say that F is a pinning of g. We show that any minimal pinning of a line by convex polytopes such that no face of a polytope is coplanar with the line has size at most eight. If, in addition, the polytopes are disjoint, then it has size at most six. We completely characterize configurations of disjoint polytopes that form minimal pinnings of a line.Comment: 27 pages, 10 figure

Coloring translates and homothets of a convex body

We obtain improved upper bounds and new lower bounds on the chromatic number as a linear function of the clique number, for the intersection graphs (and their complements) of finite families of translates and homothets of a convex body in \RR^n.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure

On optimal entanglement assisted one-shot classical communication

The one-shot success probability of a noisy classical channel for transmitting one classical bit is the optimal probability with which the bit can be sent via a single use of the channel. Prevedel et al. (PRL 106, 110505 (2011)) recently showed that for a specific channel, this quantity can be increased if the parties using the channel share an entangled quantum state. We completely characterize the optimal entanglement-assisted protocols in terms of the radius of a set of operators associated with the channel. This characterization can be used to construct optimal entanglement-assisted protocols from the given classical channel and to prove the limit of such protocols. As an example, we show that the Prevedel et al. protocol is optimal for two-qubit entanglement. We also prove some simple upper bounds on the improvement that can be obtained from quantum and no-signaling correlations.Comment: 5 pages, plus 7 pages of supplementary material. v2 is significantly expanded and contains a new result (Theorem 2

Regular Incidence Complexes, Polytopes, and C-Groups

Regular incidence complexes are combinatorial incidence structures generalizing regular convex polytopes, regular complex polytopes, various types of incidence geometries, and many other highly symmetric objects. The special case of abstract regular polytopes has been well-studied. The paper describes the combinatorial structure of a regular incidence complex in terms of a system of distinguished generating subgroups of its automorphism group or a flag-transitive subgroup. Then the groups admitting a flag-transitive action on an incidence complex are characterized as generalized string C-groups. Further, extensions of regular incidence complexes are studied, and certain incidence complexes particularly close to abstract polytopes, called abstract polytope complexes, are investigated.Comment: 24 pages; to appear in "Discrete Geometry and Symmetry", M. Conder, A. Deza, and A. Ivic Weiss (eds), Springe