No Arabic abstract
Every closed oriented PL 4-manifold is a branched cover of the 4-sphere branched over a PL-surface with finitely many singularities by Piergallini [Topology 34(3):497-508, 1995]. This generalizes a long standing result by Hilden and Montesinos to dimension four. Izmestiev and Joswig [Adv. Geom. 3(2):191-225, 2003] gave a combinatorial equivalent of the Hilden and Montesinos result, constructing closed oriented combinatorial 3-manifolds as simplicial branched covers of combinatorial 3-spheres. The construction of Izmestiev and Joswig is generalized and applied to the result of Piergallini, obtaining closed oriented combinatorial 4-manifolds as simplicial branched covers of simplicial 4-spheres.
Branched covers are applied frequently in topology - most prominently in the construction of closed oriented PL d-manifolds. In particular, strong bounds for the number of sheets and the topology of the branching set are known for dimension d<=4. On the other hand, Izmestiev and Joswig described how to obtain a simplicial covering space (the partial unfolding) of a given simplicial complex, thus obtaining a simplicial branched cover [Adv. Geom. 3(2):191-255, 2003]. We present a large class of branched covers which can be constructed via the partial unfolding. In particular, for d<=4 every closed oriented PL d-manifold is the partial unfolding of some polytopal d-sphere.
Multitriangulations, and more generally subword complexes, yield a large family of simplicial complexes that are homeomorphic to spheres. Until now, all attempts to prove or disprove that they can be realized as convex polytopes faced major obstacles. In this article, we lay out the foundations of a framework -- built upon notions from algebraic combinatorics and discrete geometry -- that allows a deeper understanding of geometric realizations of subword complexes of Coxeter groups. Namely, we describe explicitly a family of chirotopes that encapsulate the necessary information to obtain geometric realizations of subword complexes. Further, we show that the space of geometric realizations of this family covers that of subword complexes, making this combinatorially defined family into a natural object to study. The family of chirotopes is described through certain parameter matrices. That is, given a finite Coxeter group, we present matrices where certain minors have prescribed signs. Parameter matrices are universal: The existence of these matrices combined with conditions in terms of Schur functions is equivalent to the realizability of all subword complexes of this Coxeter group as chirotopes. Finally, parameter matrices provide extensions of combinatorial identities; for instance, the Vandermonde determinant and the dual Cauchy identity are recovered through suitable choices of parameters.
We define Seiberg-Witten equations on closed manifolds endowed with a Riemannian foliation of codimension 4. When the foliation is taut, we show compactness of the moduli space under some hypothesis satisfied for instance by closed K-contact manifolds. Furthermore, we prove some vanishing and non-vanishing results and we highlight that the invariants may be used to distinguish different foliations on diffeomorphic manifolds.
We introduce the notion of combinatorial gauge symmetry -- a local transformation that includes single spin rotations plus permutations of spins (or swaps of their quantum states) -- that preserve the commutation and anti-commutation relations among the spins. We show that Hamiltonians with simple two-body interactions contain this symmetry if the coupling matrix is a Hadamard matrix, with the combinatorial gauge symmetry being associated to the automorphism of these matrices with respect to monomial transformations. Armed with this symmetry, we address the physical problem of how to build quantum spin liquids with physically accessible interactions. In addition to its intrinsic physical significance, the problem is also tied to that of how to build topological qubits.
Full understanding of synchronous behavior in coupled dynamical systems beyond the identical case requires an explicit construction of the generalized synchronization manifold, whether we wish to compare the systems, or to understand their stability. Nonetheless, while synchronization has become an extremely popular topic, the bulk of the research in this area has been focused on the identical case, specifically because its invariant manifold is simply the identity function, and there have yet to be any generally workable methods to compute the generalized synchronization manifolds for non-identical systems. Here, we derive time dependent PDEs whose stationary solution mirrors exactly the generalized synchronization manifold, respecting its stability. We introduce a novel method for dealing with subtle issues with boundary conditions in the numerical scheme to solve the PDE, and we develop first order expansions close to the identical case. We give several examples of increasing sophistication, including coupled non-identical Van der Pol oscillators. By using the manifold equation, we also discuss the design of coupling to achieve desired synchronization.