arXiv research

Highly connected orbifolds are rare but exist.

In this paper we construct an infinite family of homotopically rigid spaces. These examples are then used as building blocks to forge highly connected rational spaces with prescribed finite group of self-homotopy equivalences. They are also exploited to provide highly connected inflexible and strongly chiral manifolds.

The paper finds manifold structures on complex spaces.

We prove the existence of Sasakian metrics with positive Ricci curvature on certain highly connected odd dimensional manifolds. In particular, we show that manifolds homeomorphic to the 2k-fold connected sum of S^{2n-1} x S^{2n} admit Sasakian metrics with positive Ricci curvature for all k. Furthermore, a formula for …

In this article, a six-parameter family of highly connected 7-manifolds which admit an SO(3)-invariant metric of non-negative sectional curvature is constructed and the Eells-Kuiper invariant of each is computed. In particular, it follows that all exotic spheres in dimension 7 admit an SO(3)-invariant metric of non-neg…

We show that after forming a connected sum with a homotopy sphere, all (2j-1)-connected 2j-parallelisable manifolds in dimension 4j+1, j > 0, can be equipped with Riemannian metrics of 2-positive Ricci curvature. The condition of 2-positive Ricci curvature is defined to mean that the sum of the two smallest eigenvalues…

We prove that the braided Thompson's groups $V_{\rm br}$ and $F_{\rm br}$ are of type $F_\infty$, confirming a conjecture by John Meier. The proof involves showing that matching complexes of arcs on surfaces are highly connected. In an appendix, Zaremsky uses these connectivity results to exhibit families of subgroups …

We introduce a new and rich class of graph coloring manifolds via the Hom complex construction of Lovasz. The class comprises examples of Stiefel manifolds, series of spheres and products of spheres, cubical surfaces, as well as examples of Seifert manifolds. Asymptotically, graph coloring manifolds provide examples of…

The paper classifies Poincaré complexes as topological manifolds.

We show that the space of nonpositively curved metrics of a negatively curved manifold is highly non connected.

We show that the space of negatively curved metrics of a closed negatively curved Riemannian $n$-manifold, $n\geq 10$, is highly non-connected.

We study smooth bundles over surfaces with highly connected almost parallelizable fiber $M$ of even dimension, providing necessary conditions for a manifold to be bordant to the total space of such a bundle and showing that, in most cases, these conditions are also sufficient. Using this, we determine the characteristi…

New methods train neural networks without changing weights, achieving similar or higher performance.

We study and in some cases classify highly connected manifolds which admit a Riemannian metric with positive $p$-curvature. The $p$-curvature was defined and studied by the second author. It turns out that positivity of $p$-curvature could be preserved under surgeries of codimension at least $p+3$. This gives a key to …

For $k \ge 2,$ let $M^{4k-1}$ be a $(2k{-}2)$-connected closed manifold. If $k \equiv 1$ mod $4$ assume further that $M$ is $(2k{-}1)$-parallelisable. Then there is a homotopy sphere $Σ^{4k-1}$ such that $M \sharp Σ$ admits a Ricci positive metric. This follows from a new description of these manifolds as the boundarie…

We prove a homological stability theorem for moduli spaces of high-dimensional, highly connected manifolds, with respect to forming the connected sum with the product of spheres $S^{p}\times S^{q}$, for $p < q < 2p - 2$. This result is analogous to recent results of S. Galatius and O. Randal-Williams regarding the homo…

The paper studies connectivity properties of Morse complexes as simplicial complexes grow.

An immersion of a compact manifold is tight if it admits the minimal total absolute curvature over all immersions of the manifold. A prominent result in the study of minimal total absolute curvature immersions is the theorem of Chern and Lashof, which characterizes minimal total absolute curvature immersions, and tight…

The study finds infinitely many 7-manifolds with non-negative curvature but not homotopy equivalent to bundles.

We study the complex of partial bases of a free group, which is an analogue for $\Aut(F_n)$ of the curve complex for the mapping class group. We prove that it is connected and simply connected, and we also prove that its quotient by the Torelli subgroup of $\Aut(F_n)$ is highly connected. Using these results, we give a…

We prove that the space of complete, finite volume, pinched negatively curved Riemannian metrics on a smooth high-dimensional manifold is either empty or it is highly non-connected, provided their behavior at infinity is similar.

The economical world consists of a highly interconnected and interdependent network of firms. Here we develop temporal and structural network tools to analyze the state of the economy. Our analysis indicates that a strong clustering can be a warning sign. Reduction in diversity, which was an essential aspect of the dyn…

Building on work of Stolz, we prove for integers $0 \le d \le 3$ and $k>232$ that the boundaries of $(k-1)$-connected, almost closed $(2k+d)$-manifolds also bound parallelizable manifolds. Away from finitely many dimensions, this settles longstanding questions of C.T.C. Wall, determines all Stein fillable homotopy sphe…

Let $M$ be a simply connected spin manifold of dimension at least six which admits a metric of positive scalar curvature. We show that the observer moduli space of positive scalar curvature metrics on $M$ has non-trivial higher homotopy groups. Moreover, denote by $\mathcal{M}_0^+(M)$ the moduli space of positive scala…

Let P be a closed smooth (4j-2)-connected 8j-manifold. We complete Wilkens' classification of the manifolds P for j = 1,2 and give an alternative proof to Wall's classification of the manifolds for j > 2. The Hopf-invariant-one dimensions (j=1,2) are characteristed by the fact that the quadratic linking functions which…

We equip many non compact non simply connected surfaces with smooth Riemannian metrics whose isoperimetric profile is smooth, a highly non generic property. The computation of the profile is based on a calibration argument, a rearrangement argument, the Bol-Fiala curvature dependent inequality, together with new result…

Improved method for numerical conformal mappings on complex domains.

In this paper we study smooth orientation-preserving free actions of the cyclic group $\mathbb Z/m$ on a class of $(n-1)$-connected $2n$-manifolds, $\sharp g (S^n \times S^n)\sharp Σ$, where $Σ$ is a homotopy $2n$-sphere. When $n=2$ we obtain a classification up to topological conjugation. When $n=3$ we obtain a classi…

Numerous important problems can be framed as learning from graph data. We propose a framework for learning convolutional neural networks for arbitrary graphs. These graphs may be undirected, directed, and with both discrete and continuous node and edge attributes. Analogous to image-based convolutional networks that op…

We compute the mapping class group of the manifolds $\sharp^g(S^{2k+1}\times S^{2k+1})$ for $k>0$ in terms of the automorphism group of the middle homology and the group of homotopy $(4k+3)$-spheres. We furthermore identify its Torelli subgroup, determine the abelianisations, and relate our results to the group of homo…

Even-dimensional simply connected manifolds that are rational homology spheres and double disk bundles are homeomorphic to spheres.

The American economy can be thought of as a highly connected random network in terms of both its technological and informational connections. The cumulative size of economic recessions, the fall in output from peak to trough, is analysed for the US economy 1900-2002. A least squares fit of an exponential relationship b…

We classify compact 2-connected homogeneous spaces with the same rational cohomology as a product of spheres. This classification relies on spectral sequences, homotopy theory, and representation theory. We then apply this classification to two geometric problems. The first problem is the classification of all isoparam…

In this paper, we propose new conditions guaranteeing that the trajectories of a mechanical control system can track any curve on the configuration manifold. We focus on systems that can be represented as forced affine connection control systems and we generalize the sufficient conditions for tracking known in the lite…

A clustering algorithm partitions a set of data points into smaller sets (clusters) such that each subset is more tightly packed than the whole. Many approaches to clustering translate the vector data into a graph with edges reflecting a distance or similarity metric on the points, then look for highly connected subgra…

New spaces help connect manifold structures on equivariant Poincaré spaces.

Let X be a finite CW complex or compact Lipschitz neighborhood retract with universal cover Z; let M be a compact orientable manifold of dimension at least 2 and nonempty boundary. We establish the existence of an isoperimetric profile for functions from M to Z, in the metric and cellular senses, and show that they are…

A common practice in most of deep convolutional neural architectures is to employ fully-connected layers followed by Softmax activation to minimize cross-entropy loss for the sake of classification. Recent studies show that substitution or addition of the Softmax objective to the cost functions of support vector machin…

Sum-product networks (SPNs) represent an emerging class of neural networks with clear probabilistic semantics and superior inference speed over graphical models. This work reveals a strikingly intimate connection between SPNs and tensor networks, thus leading to a highly efficient representation that we call tensor SPN…

New algorithm for Coxeter connections with maximally ramified singularities.

Recent work has shown that convolutional networks can be substantially deeper, more accurate, and efficient to train if they contain shorter connections between layers close to the input and those close to the output. In this paper, we embrace this observation and introduce the Dense Convolutional Network (DenseNet), w…

Paper reinterprets ARP algorithm and improves its analysis and speed.

Boosting methods are highly popular and effective supervised learning methods which combine weak learners into a single accurate model with good statistical performance. In this paper, we analyze two well-known boosting methods, AdaBoost and Incremental Forward Stagewise Regression (FS$_\varepsilon$), by establishing t…

The study of healthy brain development helps to better understand the brain transformation and brain connectivity patterns which happen during childhood to adulthood. This study presents a sparse machine learning solution across whole-brain functional connectivity (FC) measures of three sets of data, derived from resti…

New technique identifies submanifolds in symmetric spaces based on Ricci curvature.

We continue our study of contact structures on manifolds of dimension at least five using complex surgery theory. We show that in each dimension 2q+1 > 3 there are 'maximal' almost contact manifolds to which there is a Stein cobordism from any other (2q+1)-dimensional contact manifold. We show that the product M x S^2 …

The reliance on deep learning algorithms has grown significantly in recent years. Yet, these models are highly vulnerable to adversarial attacks, which introduce visually imperceptible perturbations into testing data to induce misclassifications. The literature has proposed several methods to combat such adversarial at…

LOCUS separates brain network connectivity matrices efficiently.