Invariant differential operators in positive characteristic

We consider an analog of the problem Veblen formulated in 1928 at the IMC: classify invariant differential operators between "natural objects" (spaces of either tensor fields, or jets, in modern terms) over a real manifold of any dimension. For unary operators, the problem was solved by Rudakov (no nonscalar operators except the exterior differential); for binary ones, by Grozman (there are no operators of orders higher than 3, operators of order 2 and 3 are, bar an exception in dimension 1, compositions of order 1 operators which, up to dualization and permutation of arguments, form 8 families). In dimension one, Grozman discovered an indecomposable selfdual operator of order 3 that does not exist in higher dimensions. We solve Veblen's problem in the 1-dimensional case over the ground field of positive characteristic. In addition to analogs of the Berezin integral (strangely overlooked so far) and binary operators constructed from them, we discovered two more (up to dualization) types of indecomposable operators of however high order: analogs of the Grozman operator and a completely new type of operators.Comment: 11 page

Trivializations of differential cocycles

Associated to a differential character is an integral cohomology class, referred to as the characteristic class, and a closed differential form, referred to as the curvature. The characteristic class and curvature are equal in de Rham cohomology, and this is encoded in a commutative square. In the Hopkins--Singer model, where differential characters are equivalence classes of differential cocycles, there is a natural notion of trivializing a differential cocycle. In this paper, we extend the notion of characteristic class, curvature, and de Rham class to trivializations of differential cocycles. These structures fit into a commutative square, and this square is a torsor for the commutative square associated to characters with degree one less. Under the correspondence between degree 2 differential cocycles and principal circle bundles with connection, we recover familiar structures associated to global sections.Comment: 20 pages; several minor corrections/revisions in v

Characteristic matrices for linear periodic delay differential equations

Szalai et al. (SIAM J. on Sci. Comp. 28(4), 2006) gave a general construction for characteristic matrices for systems of linear delay-differential equations with periodic coefficients. First, we show that matrices constructed in this way can have a discrete set of poles in the complex plane, which may possibly obstruct their use when determining the stability of the linear system. Then we modify and generalize the original construction such that the poles get pushed into a small neighborhood of the origin of the complex plane.Comment: 17 pages, 1 figur