arXiv research

We define a new notion of contracting element of a group and we show that contracting elements coincide with hyperbolic elements in relatively hyperbolic groups, pseudo-Anosovs in mapping class groups, rank one isometries in groups acting properly on proper CAT(0) spaces, elements acting hyperbolically on the Bass-Serr…

The study shows pseudo-Anosovs are common in mapping class groups.

We establish connections between contact isometry groups of certain contact manifolds and compactly supported symplectomorphism groups of their symplectizations. We apply these results to investigate the space of symplectic embeddings of balls with a single conical singularity at the origin. Using similar ideas, we als…

New families of weakly symmetric nilmanifolds discovered.

Minimal displacement set in weakly systolic complexes is systolic and embeds isometrically.

The main technical result of this paper is to characterize the contracting isometries of a CAT(0) cube complex without any assumption on its local finiteness. Afterwards, we introduce the combinatorial boundary of a CAT(0) cube complex, and we show that contracting isometries are strongly related to isolated points at …

Weakly Einstein Kähler surfaces are characterized and classified.

Study quasi-isometry invariants of square complexes and their applications.

Every lattice H in a connected semi-simple Lie group G acts properly discontinuously by isometries on the contractible manifold G/K (K a maximal compact subgroup of G). We prove that if H acts on a contractible manifold W and if either 1) the action is properly discontinuous, or 2) W is equipped with a complete Riemann…

As demonstrated by Croke and Kleiner, the visual boundary of a CAT(0) group is not well-defined since quasi-isometric CAT(0) spaces can have non-homeomorphic boundaries. We introduce a new type of boundary for a CAT(0) space, called the contracting boundary, made up rays satisfying one of five hyperbolic-like propertie…

There is a well developed theory of weakly symmetric Riemannian manifolds. Here it is shown that several results in the Riemannian case are also valid for weakly symmetric pseudo-Riemannian manifolds, but some require additional hypotheses. The topics discussed are homogeneity, geodesic completeness, the geodesic orbit…

Deviation inequalities and limit laws for random walks on metric spaces.

Study proves rigidity of marked length spectra in contracting group actions.

Study random walks on CAT(0) spaces with contracting elements, proving limit laws.

We prove that for a weakly exact magnetic system on a closed connected Riemannian manifold, almost all energy levels contain a closed orbit. More precisely, we prove the following stronger statements. Let $(M,g)$ denote a closed connected Riemannian manifold and $σ$ a weakly exact 2-form. Let $φ_{t}$ denote the magneti…

Let G be a countable group which acts by isometries on a separable, but not necessarily proper, Gromov hyperbolic space X. We say the action of G is weakly hyperbolic if G contains two independent hyperbolic isometries. We show that a random walk on such G converges to the Gromov boundary almost surely. We apply the co…

Let $X$ be a proper CAT(0) space and let $G$ be a cocompact group of isometries of $X$ which acts properly discontinuously. Charney and Sultan constructed a quasi-isometry invariant boundary for proper CAT(0) spaces which they called the contracting boundary. The contracting boundary imitates the Gromov boundary for $δ…

Let (V,W;F) be a weakly reducible, unstabilized, genus three Heegaard splitting in an orientable, irreducible 3-manifold M. In this article, we prove that either the disk complex D(F) is contractible or F is critical. Hence, the topological index of F is two if F is topologically minimal.

Weakly-irreducible not irreducible subalgebras of $\so(1,n+1)$ were classified by L. Berard Bergery and A. Ikemakhen. In the present paper a geometrical proof of this result is given. Transitively acting isometry groups of Lobachevskian spaces and transitively acting similarity transformation groups of Euclidean spaces…

Using the navigation data (h,W) of a Kropina space, we characterize weakly-Berwald Kropina spaces and Berwald Kropina spaces by means of the Killing vector field W and the parallel vector field W, respectively. Moreover, the local 1-parameter group of Finslerian local isometries of the Kropina space coincides with the …

We develop methods to study the singularities of certain $G_2$ cones related to toric hyperkahler spaces and Einstein selfdual orbifolds. This allows us to determine the low energy gauge groups of chiral N=1 compactifications of M-theory on a large family of such backgrounds, which includes the models recently studied …

We consider compact convex hypersurfaces contracting by functions of their curvature. Under the mean curvature flow, uniformly convex smooth initial hypersurfaces evolve to remain smooth and uniformly convex, and contract to points after finite time. The same holds if the initial data is only weakly convex or non-smoot…

New examples of weakly Einstein conformal products are constructed.

Random walks on metric spaces embed quasi-isometrically into the space.

Classifies weakly Einstein curvature tensors in 4D Euclidean space.

We study the fixed point set in the ideal boundary of a parabolic isometry of a proper CAT(0)-space. We show that the radius of the fixed point set is at most pi/2, and study its centers. As a consequence, we prove that the set of fixed points is contractible with respect to the Tits topology.

Whenever a finitely generated group $G$ acts properly discontinuously by isometries on a metric space $X$, there is an induced uniform embedding (a Lipschitz and uniformly proper map) $ρ: G \rightarrow X$ given by mapping $G$ to an orbit. We study when there is a difference between a finitely generated group $G$ acting…

In this letter we exhibit the relation between the isometries of a Riemannian contraction of a sub-Riemannian manifold and those of the sub-Riemannian metric, for to use this relation with two goals: establishing a result about the existence of fixed points of isometries groups; and the other, defining a Multiresolutio…

The paper studies quasimorphisms on density-preserving diffeomorphisms of the Möbius band.

We study the Lipschitz metric on Outer Space and prove that fully irreducible elements of Out(F_n) act by hyperbolic isometries with axes which are strongly contracting. As a corollary, we prove that the axes of fully irreducible automorphisms in the Cayley graph of Out(F_n) are stable, meaning that a quasi-geodesic wi…

We characterise the actions, by holomorphic isometries on a Kähler manifold with zero first Betti number, of an abelian Lie group of dim\geq 2, for which the moment map is horizontally weakly conformal (with respect to some Euclidean structure on the Lie algebra of the group). Furthermore, we study the hyper-Kähler mom…

Geodesic orbit property studied for Lorentz manifolds.

We show that the space of metrics of positive scalar curvature on any 3-manifold is either empty or contractible. Second, we show that the diffeomorphism group of every 3-dimensional spherical space form deformation retracts to its isometry group. This proves the Generalized Smale Conjecture. Our argument is independen…

We prove an explicit equivalence between various hyperbolic type properties for quasi-geodesics in CAT(0) spaces. Specifically, we prove that for X a CAT(0) space and $γ$ a quasi-geodesic, the following four statements are equivalent and moreover the quantifiers in the equivalences are explicit: (i) $γ$ is S-Slim, (ii)…

Quasi-isometries in horospherical products are close to product maps.

Let $X$ be a proper geodesic metric space and let $G$ be a group of isometries of $X$ which acts geometrically. Cordes constructed the Morse boundary of $X$ which generalizes the contracting boundary for CAT(0) spaces and the visual boundary for hyperbolic spaces. We characterize Morse elements in $G$ by their fixed po…

We develop a notion of rank one properly convex domains (or Hilbert geometries) in the real projective space. This is in the spirit of rank one non-positively curved Riemannian manifolds and CAT(0) spaces. We define rank one isometries for Hilbert geometries and characterize them as being equivalent to contracting elem…

New rigidity result for maps between curved spaces.

Random walks on free groups reveal asymmetric expansion factors.

This work is motivated by numerical solutions to Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman quasi-variational inequalities (HJBQVIs) associated with combined stochastic and impulse control problems. In particular, we consider (i) direct control, (ii) penalized, and (iii) semi-Lagrangian discretization schemes applied to the HJBQVI proble…

In this paper, we establish a sufficient condition for a geodesic in a Riemannian manifold to be homogeneous, i.e. an orbit of an $1$-parameter isometry group. As an application of this result, we provide a new proof of the fact that every weakly symmetric space is geodesic orbit manifold, i.e. all its geodesics are ho…

The Bollobás-Riordan polynomial [Math. Ann. 323, 81 (2002)] is a universal polynomial invariant for ribbon graphs. We find an extension of this polynomial for a particular family of combinatorial objects, called rank 3 weakly-colored stranded graphs. Stranded graphs arise in the study of tensor models for quantum gravi…

Proves Calabi-Yau theorem for certain nonnegative curvature manifolds.

Study on homogeneous geodesics in sub-Riemannian geometry.

Extends Teichmüller space quasi-isometry to $k$-multicurve graphs.

A diffeomorphism of pseudo-Riemannian manifolds is called sectional curvature preserving if it preserves the sectional curvature of all the nondegenerate 2-planes. We consider a similar condition for degenerate 2-planes and we prove that the diffeomorphism is conformal (when the condition is fulfilled for weakly degene…

We classify all closed, aspherical Riemannian manifolds M whose universal cover has indiscrete isometry group. One sample application is the theorem that any such M with word-hyperbolic fundamental group must be isometric to a negatively curved, locally symmetric manifold. Another application is the classification of a…

Recursive stochastic algorithms have gained significant attention in the recent past due to data driven applications. Examples include stochastic gradient descent for solving large-scale optimization problems and empirical dynamic programming algorithms for solving Markov decision problems. These recursive stochastic a…