arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Bernard Shiffman.
We provide a survey of results on the statistics of random sections of holomorphic line bundles on Kähler manifolds, with an emphasis on the resulting asymptotics when a line bundle is raised to increasing tensor powers. We conclude with a brief discussion of the `Bergman' Kähler metrics induced by these random sections.
General results on convex bodies are reviewed and used to derive an exact closed-form parametric formula for the Minkowski sum boundary of $m$ arbitrary ellipsoids in $N$-dimensional Euclidean space. Expressions for the principal curvatures of these Minkowski sums are also derived. These results are then used to obtain upper and lower volume bounds for the Minkowski sum of ellipsoids in terms of their defining matrices; the lower bounds are sharper than the Brunn-Minkowski inequality. A reverse isometric inequality for convex bodies is also given.
Linear statistics of random zero sets are integrals of smooth differential forms over the zero set and as such are smooth analogues of the volume of the random zero set inside a fixed domain. We derive an asymptotic expansion for the variance of linear statistics of the zero divisors of random holomorphic sections of powers of a positive line bundle on a compact Kähler manifold. This expansion sharpens the leading-order asymptotics (in the codimension one case) given by Shiffman--Zelditch in 2010.
We show the existence of uniformly bounded sequences of increasing numbers of orthonormal sections of powers $L^k$ of a positive holomorphic line bundle $L$ on a compact Kähler manifold $M$. In particular, we construct for each positive integer $k$, orthonormal sections $s^k_1,\dots,s^k_{n_k}$ in $H^0(M,L^k)$, $n_k\geβ\dim H^0(M,L^k)$, such that $\{s^k_j\}$ is a uniformly bounded family, where $β$ is an explicit positive constant depending only on the dimension of $M$. For $m=1$, we can take $β=.99564$.
We compute the first four coefficients of the asymptotic off-diagonal expansion of the Bergman kernel for the N-th power of a positive line bundle on a compact Kaehler manifold, and we show that the coefficient b_1 of the N^{-1/2} term vanishes when we use a K-frame. We also show that all the coefficients of the expansion are polynomials in the K-coordinates and the covariant derivatives of the curvature and are homogeneous with respect to the weight w.
We introduce several notions of `random fewnomials', i.e. random polynomials with a fixed number f of monomials of degree N. The f exponents are chosen at random and then the coefficients are chosen to be Gaussian random, mainly from the SU(m + 1) ensemble. The results give limiting formulas as N goes to infinity for the expected distribution of complex zeros of a system of k random fewnomials in m variables. When k = m, for SU(m + 1) polynomials, the limit is the Monge-Ampere measure of a toric Kaehler potential on CP^m obtained by averaging a `discrete Legendre transform' of the Fubini-Study symplectic potential at f points of the unit simplex in R^m.
We study the conditional distribution of zeros of a Gaussian system of random polynomials (and more generally, holomorphic sections), given that the polynomials or sections vanish at a point p (or a fixed finite set of points). The conditional distribution is analogous to the pair correlation function of zeros, but we show that it has quite a different small distance behavior. In particular, the conditional distribution does not exhibit repulsion of zeros in dimension one. To prove this, we give universal scaling asymptotics for the conditional zero distribution around p. The key tool is the conditional Szego kernel and its scaling asymptotics.
We show that the variance of the number of simultaneous zeros of $m$ i.i.d. Gaussian random polynomials of degree $N$ in an open set $U \subset C^m$ with smooth boundary is asymptotic to $N^{m-1/2} ν_{mm} Vol(\partial U)$, where $ν_{mm}$ is a universal constant depending only on the dimension $m$. We also give formulas for the variance of the volume of the set of simultaneous zeros in $U$ of $k<m$ random degree-$N$ polynomials on $C^m$. Our results hold more generally for the simultaneous zeros of random holomorphic sections of the $N$-th power of any positive line bundle over any $m$-dimensional compact Kähler manifold.
We give asymptotic large deviations estimates for the volume inside a domain U of the zero set of a random polynomial of degree N, or more generally, of a holomorphic section of the N-th power of a positive line bundle on a compact Kaehler manifold. In particular, we show that for all $δ>0$, the probability that this volume differs by more than $δN$ from its average value is less than $\exp(-C_{δ,U}N^{m+1})$, for some constant $C_{δ,U}>0$. As a consequence, the "hole probability" that a random section does not vanish in U has an upper bound of the form $\exp(-C_{U}N^{m+1})$.
We consider the zero sets $Z_N$ of systems of $m$ random polynomials of degree $N$ in $m$ complex variables, and we give asymptotic formulas for the random variables given by summing a smooth test function over $Z_N$. Our asymptotic formulas show that the variances for these smooth statistics have the growth $N^{m-2}$. We also prove analogues for the integrals of smooth test forms over the subvarieties defined by $k<m$ random polynomials. Such linear statistics of random zero sets are smooth analogues of the random variables given by counting the number of zeros in an open set, which we proved elsewhere to have variances of order $N^{m-1/2}$. We use the variance asymptotics and off-diagonal estimates of Szego kernels to extend an asymptotic normality result of Sodin-Tsirelson to the case of smooth linear statistics for zero sets of codimension one in any dimension $m$.
We show that the zeros of random sequences of Gaussian systems of polynomials of increasing degree almost surely converge to the expected limit distribution under very general hypotheses. In particular, the normalized distribution of zeros of systems of m polynomials of degree N, orthonormalized on a regular compact subset K of C^m, almost surely converge to the equilibrium measure on K as the degree N goes to infinity.
For a regular compact set $K$ in $C^m$ and a measure $μ$ on $K$ satisfying the Bernstein-Markov inequality, we consider the ensemble $P_N$ of polynomials of degree $N$, endowed with the Gaussian probability measure induced by $L^2(μ)$. We show that for large $N$, the simultaneous zeros of $m$ polynomials in $P_N$ tend to concentrate around the Silov boundary of $K$; more precisely, their expected distribution is asymptotic to $N^m μ_{eq}$, where $μ_{eq}$ is the equilibrium measure of $K$. For the case where $K$ is the unit ball, we give scaling asymptotics for the expected distribution of zeros as $N\to\infty$.
The main results of this article are asymptotic formulas for the variance of the number of zeros of a Gaussian random polynomial of degree $N$ in an open set $U \subset C$ as the degree $N \to \infty$, and more generally for the zeros of random holomorphic sections of high powers of any positive line bundle over any Riemann surface. The formulas were conjectured in special cases by Forrester and Honner. In higher dimensions, we give similar formulas for the variance of the volume inside a domain $U$ of the zero hypersurface of a random holomorphic section of a high power of a positive line bundle over any compact Kähler manifold. These results generalize the variance asymptotics of Sodin and Tsirelson for special model ensembles of chaotic analytic functions in one variable to any ample line bundle and Riemann surface. We also combine our methods with those of Sodin-Tsirelson to generalize their asymptotic normality results for smoothed number statistics.
Motivated by the vacuum selection problem of string/M theory, we study a new geometric invariant of a positive Hermitian line bundle $(L, h)\to M$ over a compact Kähler manifold: the expected distribution of critical points of a Gaussian random holomorphic section $s \in H^0(M, L)$ with respect to the Chern connection $\nabla_h$. It is a measure on $M$ whose total mass is the average number $\mathcal{N}^{crit}_h$ of critical points of a random holomorphic section. We are interested in the metric dependence of $\mathcal{N}^{crit}_h$, especially metrics $h$ which minimize $\mathcal{N}^{crit}_h$. We concentrate on the asymptotic minimization problem for the sequence of tensor powers $(L^N, h^N)\to M$ of the line bundle and their critical point densities $\mathcal{K}^{crit}_{N,h}(z)$. We prove that $\mathcal{K}^{crit}_{N,h}(z)$ has a complete asymptotic expansion in $N$ whose coefficients are curvature invariants of $h$. The first two terms in the expansion of $\mathcal{N}^{crit}_{N,h}$ are topological invariants of $(L, M)$. The third term is a topological invariant plus a constant $β_2(m)$ (depending only on the dimension $m$ of $M$) times the Calabi functional $\int_M ρ^2 dV_h$, where $ρ$ is the scalar curvature of the Kähler metric $ω_h:=\frac i2 Θ_h$. We give an integral formula for $β_2(m)$ and show, by a computer assisted calculation, that $β_2(m)>0$ for $m\leq 5$, hence that $\mathcal{N}^{crit}_{N,h}$ is asymptotically minimized by the Calabi extremal metric (when one exists). We conjecture that $β_2(m)>0$ in all dimensions, i.e. the Calabi extremal metric is always the asymptotic minimizer.
A fundamental problem in contemporary string/M theory is to count the number of inequivalent vacua satisfying constraints in a string theory model. This article contains the first rigorous results on the number and distribution of supersymmetric vacua of type IIb string theories compactified on a Calabi-Yau 3-fold $X$ with flux. In particular, complete proofs of the counting formulas in Ashok-Douglas and Denef-Douglas are given, together with van der Corput style remainder estimates. We also give evidence that the number of vacua satisfying the tadpole constraint in regions of bounded curvature in moduli space is of exponential growth in $b_3(X)$.
Supersymmetric vacua (`universes') of string/M theory may be identified with certain critical points of a holomorphic section (the `superpotential') of a Hermitian holomorphic line bundle over a complex manifold. An important physical problem is to determine how many vacua there are and how they are distributed. The present paper initiates the study of the statistics of critical points $\nabla s = 0$ of Gaussian random holomorphic sections with respect to a connection $\nabla$. Even the expected number of critical points depends on the curvature of $\nabla$. The principal results give formulas for the expected density and number of critical points of Gaussian random sections relative to $\nabla$ in a variety of settings. The results are particularly concrete for Riemann surfaces. Analogous results on the density of critical points of fixed Morse index are given.
We show that a general small deformation of the union of two general cones in P3 of degree >= 4 is Kobayashi hyperbolic. Hence we obtain new examples of hyperbolic surfaces in P3 of any given degree d>= 8.
We determine the asymptotics of the joint eigenfunctions of the torus action on a toric Kahler variety. Such varieties are models of completely integrable systems in complex geometry. We first determine the pointwise asymptotics of the eigenfunctions, which show that they behave like Gaussians centered at the corresponding classical torus. We then show that there is a universal Gaussian scaling limit of the distribution function near its center. We also determine the limit distribution for the tails of the eigenfunctions on large length scales. These are not universal but depend on the global geometry of the toric variety and in particular on the details of the exponential decay of the eigenfunctions away from the classically allowed set.