arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Gabriel Khan.
In this paper, we establish a priori log-concavity estimates for the first Dirichlet eigenfunction of convex domains of a Riemannian manifold. Specifically, we focus on cases where the principal eigenfunction $u$ is assumed to be log-concave and our primary goal is to obtain quantitative estimates for the Hessian of $\log u$.
For a given ground cost, approximating the Monge optimal transport map that pushes forward a given probability measure onto another has become a staple in several modern machine learning algorithms. The fourth-order Ma-Trudinger-Wang (MTW) tensor associated with this ground cost function provides a notion of curvature in optimal transport. The non-negativity of this tensor plays a crucial role for establishing continuity for the Monge optimal transport map. It is, however, generally difficult to analytically verify this condition for any given ground cost. To expand the class of cost functions for which MTW non-negativity can be verified, we propose a provably correct computational approach which provides certificates of non-negativity for the MTW tensor using Sum-of-Squares (SOS) programming. We further show that our SOS technique can also be used to compute an inner approximation of the region where MTW non-negativity holds. We apply our proposed SOS programming method to several practical ground cost functions to approximate the regions of regularity of their corresponding optimal transport maps.
The fundamental gap is the difference between the first two Dirichlet eigenvalues of a Schr\"odinger operator (and the Laplacian, in particular). For horoconvex domains in hyperbolic space, Nguyen, Stancu and Wei conjectured that it is possible to obtain a lower bound on the fundamental gap in terms of the diameter of the domain and the dimension [IMRN2022]. In this article, we prove this conjecture by establishing conformal log-concavity estimates for the first eigenfunction. This builds off earlier work by the authors and Saha as well as recent work by Cho, Wei and Yang. We also prove spectral gap estimates for a more general class of problems on conformally flat manifolds and investigate the relationship between the gap and the inradius. For example, we establish gap estimates for domains in $\mathbb{S}^1 \times \mathbb{S}^{N-1}$ which are convex with respect to the universal affine cover
We study the Dirichlet problem for the weighted Schr\"odinger operator \[-\Delta u +Vu = \lambda \rho u,\] where $\rho$ is a positive weighting function and $V$ is a potential. Such equations appear naturally in conformal geometry and in the composite membrane problem. Our primary goal is to establish concavity estimates for the principle eigenfunction with respect to conformal connections. Doing so, we obtain new bounds on the fundamental gap problem, which is the difference between the first and second eigenvalues. In particular, we partially resolve a conjecture of Nguyen, Stancu and Wei [IMRN 2022] on the fundamental gap of horoconvex domains. In addition, we obtain a power convexity estimate for solutions to the torsion problem in spherical geometry on convex domains which are not too large.
The interior hull of a lattice polygon is the convex closure of the lattice points in the interior of the polygon. In this paper we give a concrete description of the interior hull of a clean lattice parallelogram. A clean parallelogram in $\mathbb{R}^2$ is a lattice parallelogram whose boundary contains no lattice points other than its vertices. Using unimodular maps we can identify a clean parallelogram with a parallelogram, $P_{a,n}$, whose vertices are $(0,0), (1,0), (a,n)$ and $(a+1,n)$, with $0<a <n$ and $\gcd(a,n)=1$. Following Stark's geometric approach to continued fractions we show that the convergents of the continued fraction of $n/a$ (viewed as lattice points) appear in a one-to-two correspondence with the vertices of the interior hull of this parallelogram. Consequently, if the continued fraction of $n/a$ has many partial quotients, then the interior hull of the corresponding parallelogram has many vertices. A pleasing consequence of our work is that we obtain an elementary geometric interpretation of the sum of the partial quotients of the continued fraction of $n/a$. Specifically, it is the difference between the area of the clean parallelogram $P_{a,n}$ and the area of its interior hull.
The fundamental gap of a domain is the difference between the first two eigenvalues of the Laplace operator. In a series of recent and celebrated works, it was shown that for convex domains in $\mathbb R^n$ and $\mathbb S^n$ with Dirichlet boundary condition the fundamental gap is at least $\frac{3 \pi^2}{D^2}$ where $D$ denotes the diameter of the domain. The key to these results is to establish a strong concavity estimate for the logarithm of the first eigenfunction. In this article, we prove corresponding log-concavity and fundamental gap estimates for surfaces with non-constant positive curvature via a two-point maximum principle. However, the curvature not being constant greatly increases the difficulty of the computation.
We study curve-shortening flow for twisted curves in $\mathbb{R}^3$ (i.e., curves with nowhere vanishing curvature $\kappa$ and torsion $\tau$) and define a notion of torsion-curvature entropy. Using this functional, we show that either the curve develops an inflection point or the eventual singularity is highly irregular (and likely impossible). In particular, it must be a Type II singularity which admits sequences along which $\frac{\tau}{\kappa^2} \to \infty$. This contrasts strongly with Altschuler's planarity theorem [J. Differential Geom. (1991)], which shows that along any essential blow-up sequence, $\frac{\tau}{\kappa} \to 0$.
We study the log-concavity of the first Dirichlet eigenfunction of the Laplacian for convex domains. For positively curved surfaces satisfying a condition involving the curvature and its second derivatives, we show that the first eigenfunction is strongly log-concave. Previously, for general convex domains, the log-concavity of the first eigenfunctions were only known when lying in $\mathbb{R}^n$ and $\mathbb{S}^n$. Using this estimate, we establish lower bounds on the fundamental gap of such regions. Furthermore, we study the behavior of these estimates under Ricci flow and other deformations of the metric.
We consider the Laplace-Beltrami operator with Dirichlet boundary conditions on convex domains in a Riemannian manifold $(M^n,g)$, and prove that the product of the fundamental gap with the square of the diameter can be arbitrarily small whenever $M^n$ has even a single tangent plane of negative sectional curvature. In particular, the fundamental gap conjecture strongly fails for small deformations of Euclidean space which introduce any negative curvature. We also show that when the curvature is negatively pinched, it is possible to construct such domains of any diameter up to the diameter of the manifold. The proof is adapted from the argument of Bourni et. al. (Annales Henri Poincar\'e 2022), which established the analogous result for convex domains in hyperbolic space, but requires several new ingredients.
Information geometry and optimal transport are two distinct geometric frameworks for modeling families of probability measures. During the recent years, there has been a surge of research endeavors that cut across these two areas and explore their links and interactions. This paper is intended to provide an (incomplete) survey of these works, including entropy-regularized transport, divergence functions arising from $c$-duality, density manifolds and transport information geometry, the para-K\"ahler and K\"ahler geometries underlying optimal transport and the regularity theory for its solutions. Some outstanding questions that would be of interest to audience of both these two disciplines are posed. Our piece also serves as an introduction to the Special Issue on Optimal Transport of the journal Information Geometry.
The Ricci flow is one of the most important topics in differential geometry, and a central focus of modern geometric analysis. In this paper, we give an illustrated introduction to the subject which is intended for a general audience. The goal is to provide a working definition of the Ricci flow as well as some intuition for its behavior without assuming any prerequisite knowledge of differential geometry or topology.
The primary objects of study in information geometry are statistical manifolds, which are parametrized families of probability measures, induced with the Fisher-Rao metric and a pair of torsion-free conjugate connections. In recent work, the authors considered parametrized probability distributions as partially-flat statistical manifolds admitting torsion and showed that there is a complex to symplectic duality on the tangent bundles of such manifolds, based on the dualistic geometry of the underlying manifold. In this paper, we explore this correspondence further in the context of Hessian manifolds, in which case the conjugate connections are both curvature- and torsion-free, and the associated dual pair of spaces are K\"ahler manifolds. We focus on several key examples and their geometric features. In particular, we show that the moduli space of univariate normal distributions gives rise to a correspondence between the Siegel half-space and the Siegel-Jacobi space, which are spaces that appear in the context of automorphic forms.
We establish a lower bound for the real eigenvalues of a Laplace-Beltrami operator with an $L^\infty$-drift term. We make no assumptions that the operator is self-adjoint or that the drift has any additional regularity. In the case where the operator is self-adjoint, this establishes a lower bound on the spectrum without assuming a lower bound for the Bakry-Emery Ricci tensor. Put colloquially, this result states that no matter which way the wind blows, heat will diffuse at a definite rate depending only on the geometry of the underlying space and the maximal wind speed.
In recent work (Pure Appl. Anal. 2 (2020), 397-426), the first named author and J. Zhang found a connection between the regularity theory of optimal transport and the curvature of K\"ahler manifolds. In particular, we showed that the MTW tensor for a cost function $c(x,y)=\Psi(x-y)$ can be understood as the anti-bisectional curvature of an associated K\"ahler metric defined on a tube domain. Here, the anti-bisectional curvature is defined as $R(\mathcal{X}, \overline{ \mathcal{Y}},\mathcal{X}, \overline{ \mathcal{Y}}) $ where $\mathcal{X}$ and $\mathcal{Y}$ are polarized $(1,0)$ vectors and $R$ is the curvature tensor. The correspondence between the anti-bisectional curvature and the MTW tensor provides a meaningful sense in which the anti-bisectional curvature can have a sign (i.e., be positive or negative). In this paper, we study the behavior of the anti-bisectional curvature under K\"ahler-Ricci flow. We find that non-positive anti-bisectional curvature is preserved under the flow. In complex dimension two, we also show that non-negative orthogonal anti-bisectional curvature (i.e., the MTW(0) condition) is preserved under the flow. We provide several applications of these results -- in complex geometry, optimal transport, and affine geometry.
In this article, we study a class of K\"ahler manifolds defined on tube domains in $\mathbb{C}^n$, and in particular those which have $O(n) \times \mathbb{R}^n$ symmetry. For these, we prove a uniqueness result showing that any such manifold which is complete and has non-negative orthogonal bisectional curvature ($n \geq 3$) or non-negative bisectional curvature ($n \geq 2$) is biholomorphically isometric to $\mathbb{C}^n$. We also consider another curvature tensor called the \emph{orthogonal anti-bisectional curvature}. We find necessary and sufficient conditions for a complete $O(n)$-symmetric tube domain to have non-negative orthogonal anti-bisectional curvature and provide several examples of complete metrics which satisfy this condition. Finally, we discuss some applications of these spaces within optimal transport. In particular, we study "synthetic" curvature bounds for non-smooth geometries and how they can be applied to the rough geometry induced by the Monge cost $c(x,y)=\|x-y\|$.
Let $a,n \in \mathbb{Z}^+$, with $a<n$ and $\gcd(a,n)=1$. Let $P_{a,n}$ denote the lattice parallelogram spanned by $(1,0)$ and $(a,n)$, that is, $$P_{a,n} = \left\{ t_1(1,0)+ t_2(a,n) \, : \, 0\leq t_1,t_2 \leq 1 \right\}, $$ and let $$V(a,n) = \# \textrm{ of visible lattice points in the interior of } P_{a,n}.$$ In this paper we prove some elementary (and straightforward) results for $V(a,n)$. The most interesting aspects of the paper are in Section 5 where we discuss some numerics and display some graphs of $V(a,n)/n$. (These graphs resemble an integral sign that has been rotated counter-clockwise by $90^\circ$.) The numerics and graphs suggest the conjecture that for $a\not= 1, n-1$, $V(a,n)/n$ satisfies the inequality $$ 0.5 < V(a,n)/n< 0.75.$$
Let $X$ and $Y$ be domains of $\mathbb{R}^n$ equipped with respective probability measures $μ$ and $ ν$. We consider the problem of optimal transport from $μ$ to $ν$ with respect to a cost function $c: X \times Y \to \mathbb{R}$. To ensure that the solution to this problem is smooth, it is necessary to make several assumptions about the structure of the domains and the cost function. In particular, Ma, Trudinger, and Wang established regularity estimates when the domains are strongly \textit{relatively $c$-convex} with respect to each other and cost function has non-negative \textit{MTW tensor}. For cost functions of the form $c(x,y)= Ψ(x-y)$ for some convex function $Ψ$, we find an associated Kähler manifold whose orthogonal anti-bisectional curvature is proportional to the MTW tensor. We also show that relative $c$-convexity geometrically corresponds to geodesic convexity with respect to a dual affine connection. Taken together, these results provide a geometric framework for optimal transport which is complementary to the pseudo-Riemannian theory of Kim and McCann. We provide several applications of this work. In particular, we find a complete Kähler surface with non-negative orthogonal bisectional curvature that is not a Hermitian symmetric space or biholomorphic to $\mathbb{C}^2$. We also address a question in mathematical finance raised by Pal and Wong on the regularity of \textit{pseudo-arbitrages}, or investment strategies which outperform the market.
In this paper, we prove that the total expected curvature for random spatial equilateral quadrilaterals with diameter at most $r$ decreases as $r$ increases. To do so, we prove several curvature monotonicity inequalities and stochastic ordering lemmas in terms the of the action-angle coordinates. Using these, we can use Baddeley's extension of Crofton's differential equation to show that the derivative of the expected total curvature is non-positive.