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We develop the method of Fischer-Riesz equations for general boundary value problems elliptic in the sense of Douglis-Nirenberg. To this end we reduce them to a boundary problem for a (possibly overdetermined) first order system whose classical symbol has a left inverse. For such a problem there is a uniquely determined boundary value problem which is adjoint to the given one with respect to the Green formula. On using a well elaborated theory of approximation by solutions of the adjoint problem, we find the Cauchy data of solutions of our problem.
Asymptotic solutions of the Dirichlet problem for the heat equation at a characteristic point
(2012)
The Dirichlet problem for the heat equation in a bounded domain is characteristic, for there are boundary points at which the boundary touches a characteristic hyperplane t = c, c being a constant. It was I.G. Petrovskii (1934) who first found necessary and sufficient conditions on the boundary which guarantee that the solution is continuous up to the characteristic point, provided that the Dirichlet data are continuous. This paper initiated standing interest in studying general boundary value problems for parabolic equations in bounded domains. We contribute to the study by constructing a formal solution of the Dirichlet problem for the heat equation in a neighbourhood of a characteristic boundary point and showing its asymptotic character.
The paper presents a classification of the basic types of admissible solutions of the general Friedmann equation with non-vanishing cosmological constant and for the case that radiation and matter do not couple. There are four distinct types. The classification uses first the discriminant of a polynomial of the third degree, closely related to the right hand side of the Friedmann equation. The decisive term is then a critical radiation density which can be calculated explicitly.
The ensemble Kalman filter has emerged as a promising filter algorithm for nonlinear differential equations subject to intermittent observations. In this paper, we extend the well-known Kalman-Bucy filter for linear differential equations subject to continous observations to the ensemble setting and nonlinear differential equations. The proposed filter is called the ensemble Kalman-Bucy filter and its performance is demonstrated for a simple mechanical model (Langevin dynamics) subject to incremental observations of its velocity.
Bayesian selection of Markov Models for symbol sequences application to microsaccadic eye movements
(2012)
Complex biological dynamics often generate sequences of discrete events which can be described as a Markov process. The order of the underlying Markovian stochastic process is fundamental for characterizing statistical dependencies within sequences. As an example for this class of biological systems, we investigate the Markov order of sequences of microsaccadic eye movements from human observers. We calculate the integrated likelihood of a given sequence for various orders of the Markov process and use this in a Bayesian framework for statistical inference on the Markov order. Our analysis shows that data from most participants are best explained by a first-order Markov process. This is compatible with recent findings of a statistical coupling of subsequent microsaccade orientations. Our method might prove to be useful for a broad class of biological systems.
We introduce a theoretical framework for performing statistical hypothesis testing simultaneously over a fairly general, possibly uncountably infinite, set of null hypotheses. This extends the standard statistical setting for multiple hypotheses testing, which is restricted to a finite set. This work is motivated by numerous modern applications where the observed signal is modeled by a stochastic process over a continuum. As a measure of type I error, we extend the concept of false discovery rate (FDR) to this setting. The FDR is defined as the average ratio of the measure of two random sets, so that its study presents some challenge and is of some intrinsic mathematical interest. Our main result shows how to use the p-value process to control the FDR at a nominal level, either under arbitrary dependence of p-values, or under the assumption that the finite dimensional distributions of the p-value process have positive correlations of a specific type (weak PRDS). Both cases generalize existing results established in the finite setting, the latter one leading to a less conservative procedure. The interest of this approach is demonstrated in several non-parametric examples: testing the mean/signal in a Gaussian white noise model, testing the intensity of a Poisson process and testing the c.d.f. of i.i.d. random variables. Conceptually, an interesting feature of the setting advocated here is that it focuses directly on the intrinsic hypothesis space associated with a testing model on a random process, without referring to an arbitrary discretization.
The authors discuss the use of the discrepancy principle for statistical inverse problems, when the underlying operator is of trace class. Under this assumption the discrepancy principle is well defined, however a plain use of it may occasionally fail and it will yield sub-optimal rates. Therefore, a modification of the discrepancy is introduced, which corrects both of the above deficiencies. For a variety of linear regularization schemes as well as for conjugate gradient iteration it is shown to yield order optimal a priori error bounds under general smoothness assumptions. A posteriori error control is also possible, however at a sub-optimal rate, in general. This study uses and complements previous results for bounded deterministic noise.
The authors discuss the use of the discrepancy principle for statistical inverse problems, when the underlying operator is of trace class. Under this assumption the discrepancy principle is well defined, however a plain use of it may occasionally fail and it will yield sub-optimal rates. Therefore, a modification of the discrepancy is introduced, which takes into account both of the above deficiencies. For a variety of linear regularization schemes as well as for conjugate gradient iteration this modification is shown to yield order optimal a priori error bounds under general smoothness assumptions. A posteriori error control is also possible, however at a sub-optimal rate, in general. This study uses and complements previous results for bounded deterministic noise.
This thesis investigates the gradient flow of Dirac-harmonic maps. Dirac-harmonic maps are critical points of an energy functional that is motivated from supersymmetric field theories. The critical points of this energy functional couple the equation for harmonic maps with spinor fields. At present, many analytical properties of Dirac-harmonic maps are known, but a general existence result is still missing. In this thesis the existence question is studied using the evolution equations for a regularized version of Dirac-harmonic maps. Since the energy functional for Dirac-harmonic maps is unbounded from below the method of the gradient flow cannot be applied directly. Thus, we first of all consider a regularization prescription for Dirac-harmonic maps and then study the gradient flow. Chapter 1 gives some background material on harmonic maps/harmonic spinors and summarizes the current known results about Dirac-harmonic maps. Chapter 2 introduces the notion of Dirac-harmonic maps in detail and presents a regularization prescription for Dirac-harmonic maps. In Chapter 3 the evolution equations for regularized Dirac-harmonic maps are introduced. In addition, the evolution of certain energies is discussed. Moreover, the existence of a short-time solution to the evolution equations is established. Chapter 4 analyzes the evolution equations in the case that the domain manifold is a closed curve. Here, the existence of a smooth long-time solution is proven. Moreover, for the regularization being large enough, it is shown that the evolution equations converge to a regularized Dirac-harmonic map. Finally, it is discussed in which sense the regularization can be removed. In Chapter 5 the evolution equations are studied when the domain manifold is a closed Riemmannian spin surface. For the regularization being large enough, the existence of a global weak solution, which is smooth away from finitely many singularities is proven. It is shown that the evolution equations converge weakly to a regularized Dirac-harmonic map. In addition, it is discussed if the regularization can be removed in this case.
We introduce renormalized integrals which generalize conventional measure theoretic integrals. One approximates the integration domain by measure spaces and defines the integral as the limit of integrals over the approximating spaces. This concept is implicitly present in many mathematical contexts such as Cauchy's principal value, the determinant of operators on a Hilbert space and the Fourier transform of an L^p function. We use renormalized integrals to define a path integral on manifolds by approximation via geodesic polygons. The main part of the paper is dedicated to the proof of a path integral formula for the heat kernel of any self-adjoint generalized Laplace operator acting on sections of a vector bundle over a compact Riemannian manifold.
A linear differential operator L is called weakly hypoelliptic if any local solution u of Lu = 0 is smooth. We allow for systems, i.e. the coefficients may be matrices, not necessarily of square size. This is a huge class of important operators which covers all elliptic, overdetermined elliptic, subelliptic and parabolic equations. We extend several classical theorems from complex analysis to solutions of any weakly hypoelliptic equation: the Montel theorem providing convergent subsequences, the Vitali theorem ensuring convergence of a given sequence, and Riemann's first removable singularity theorem. In the case of constant coefficients we show that Liouville's theorem holds, any bounded solution must be constant and any L^p solution must vanish.
We study boundary value problems for linear elliptic differential operators of order one. The underlying manifold may be noncompact, but the boundary is assumed to be compact. We require a symmetry property of the principal symbol of the operator along the boundary. This is satisfied by Dirac type operators, for instance. We provide a selfcontained introduction to (nonlocal) elliptic boundary conditions, boundary regularity of solutions, and index theory. In particular, we simplify and generalize the traditional theory of elliptic boundary value problems for Dirac type operators. We also prove a related decomposition theorem, a general version of Gromov and Lawson's relative index theorem and a generalization of the cobordism theorem.
This is an introduction to Wiener measure and the Feynman-Kac formula on general Riemannian manifolds for Riemannian geometers with little or no background in stochastics. We explain the construction of Wiener measure based on the heat kernel in full detail and we prove the Feynman-Kac formula for Schrödinger operators with bounded potentials. We also consider normal Riemannian coverings and show that projecting and lifting of paths are inverse operations which respect the Wiener measure.
The Gaussian Graphical Model (GGM) is a popular tool for incorporating sparsity into joint multivariate distributions. The G-Wishart distribution, a conjugate prior for precision matrices satisfying general GGM constraints, has now been in existence for over a decade. However, due to the lack of a direct sampler, its use has been limited in hierarchical Bayesian contexts, relegating mixing over the class of GGMs mostly to situations involving standard Gaussian likelihoods. Recent work has developed methods that couple model and parameter moves, first through reversible jump methods and later by direct evaluation of conditional Bayes factors and subsequent resampling. Further, methods for avoiding prior normalizing constant calculations-a serious bottleneck and source of numerical instability-have been proposed. We review and clarify these developments and then propose a new methodology for GGM comparison that blends many recent themes. Theoretical developments and computational timing experiments reveal an algorithm that has limited computational demands and dramatically improves on computing times of existing methods. We conclude by developing a parsimonious multivariate stochastic volatility model that embeds GGM uncertainty in a larger hierarchical framework. The method is shown to be capable of adapting to swings in market volatility, offering improved calibration of predictive distributions.
A discrete analogue of the Witten Laplacian on the n-dimensional integer lattice is considered. After rescaling of the operator and the lattice size we analyze the tunnel effect between different wells, providing sharp asymptotics of the low-lying spectrum. Our proof, inspired by work of B. Helffer, M. Klein and F. Nier in continuous setting, is based on the construction of a discrete Witten complex and a semiclassical analysis of the corresponding discrete Witten Laplacian on 1-forms. The result can be reformulated in terms of metastable Markov processes on the lattice.
The study of the semigroups OPn, of all orientation-preserving transformations on an n-element chain, and ORn, of all orientation-preserving or orientation-reversing transformations on an n-element chain, has began in [17] and [5]. In order to bring more insight into the subsemigroup structure of OPn and ORn, we characterize their maximal subsemigroups.
A partial transformation alpha on an n-element chain X-n is called order-preserving if x <= y implies x alpha <= y alpha for all x, y in the domain of alpha and it is called extensive if x <= x alpha for all x in the domain of alpha. The set of all partial order-preserving extensive transformations on X-n forms a semiband POEn. We determine the maximal subsemigroups as well as the maximal subsemibands of POEn.
We study the Dirichlet problem in a bounded plane domain for the heat equation with small parameter multiplying the derivative in t. The behaviour of solution at characteristic points of the boundary is of special interest. The behaviour is well understood if a characteristic line is tangent to the boundary with contact degree at least 2. We allow the boundary to not only have contact of degree less than 2 with a characteristic line but also a cuspidal singularity at a characteristic point. We construct an asymptotic solution of the problem near the characteristic point to describe how the boundary layer degenerates.