arXiv subjects

Richard Montgomery

Publications and source records attributed to Richard Montgomery.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

Universality for bounded degree spanning trees in randomly perturbed graphs

We solve a problem of Krivelevich, Kwan and Sudakov [SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics 31 (2017), 155-171] concerning the threshold for the containment of all bounded degree spanning trees in the model of randomly perturbed dense graphs. More precisely, we show that, if we start with a dense graph $G_α$ on $n$ vertices with $δ(G_α)\ge αn$ for $α>0$ and we add to it the binomial random graph $G(n,C/n)$, then with high probability the graph $G_α\cup G(n,C/n)$ contains copies of all spanning trees with maximum degree at most $Δ$ simultaneously, where $C$ depends only on $α$ and $Δ$.

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arXiv2018

Decompositions into spanning rainbow structures

A subgraph of an edge-coloured graph is called rainbow if all its edges have distinct colours. The study of rainbow subgraphs goes back more than two hundred years to the work of Euler on Latin squares and has been the focus of extensive research ever since. Euler posed a problem equivalent to finding properly $n$-edge-coloured complete bipartite graphs $K_{n,n}$ which can be decomposed into rainbow perfect matchings. While there are proper edge-colourings of $K_{n,n}$ without even a single rainbow perfect matching, the theme of this paper is to show that with some very weak additional constraints one can find many disjoint rainbow perfect matchings. In particular, we prove that if some fraction of the colour classes have at most $(1-o(1)) n$ edges then one can nearly-decompose the edges of $K_{n,n}$ into edge-disjoint perfect rainbow matchings. As an application of this, we establish in a very strong form a conjecture of Akbari and Alipour and asymptotically prove a conjecture of Barat and Nagy. Both these conjectures concern rainbow perfect matchings in edge-colourings of $K_{n,n}$ with quadratically many colours. Using our techniques, we also prove a number of results on near-decompositions of graphs into other rainbow structures like Hamiltonian cycles and spanning trees. Most notably, we prove that any properly coloured complete graph can be nearly-decomposed into spanning rainbow trees. This asymptotically proves the Brualdi-Hollingsworth and Kaneko-Kano-Suzuki conjectures which predict that a perfect decomposition should exist under the same assumptions.

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arXiv2018

Embedding rainbow trees with applications to graph labelling and decomposition

A subgraph of an edge-coloured graph is called rainbow if all its edges have distinct colours. The study of rainbow subgraphs goes back more than two hundred years to the work of Euler on Latin squares. Since then rainbow structures have been the focus of extensive research and have found applications in the areas of graph labelling and decomposition. An edge-colouring is locally $k$-bounded if each vertex is contained in at most $k$ edges of the same colour. In this paper we prove that any such edge-colouring of the complete graph $K_n$ contains a rainbow copy of every tree with at most $(1-o(1))n/k$ vertices. As a locally $k$-bounded edge-colouring of $K_n$ may have only $(n-1)/k$ distinct colours, this is essentially tight. As a corollary of this result we obtain asymptotic versions of two long-standing conjectures in graph theory. Firstly, we prove an asymptotic version of Ringel's conjecture from 1963, showing that any $n$-edge tree packs into the complete graph $K_{2n+o(n)}$ to cover all but $o(n^2)$ of its edges. Secondly, we show that all trees have an almost-harmonious labelling. The existence of such a labelling was conjectured by Graham and Sloane in 1980. We also discuss some additional applications.

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arXiv2018

Forcing large tight components in 3-graphs

Any $n$-vertex $3$-graph with minimum codegree at least $\lfloor n/3\rfloor$ must have a spanning tight component, but immediately below this threshold it is possible for no tight component to span more than $\lceil 2n/3\rceil$ vertices. Motivated by this observation, we ask which codegree forces a tight component of at least any given size. The corresponding function seems to have infinitely many discontinuities, but we provide upper and lower bounds, which asymptotically converge as the function nears the origin.

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arXiv2018

Oscillating about coplanarity in the 4 body problem

For the Newtonian 4-body problem in space we prove that any zero angular momentum bounded solution suffers infinitely many coplanar instants, that is, times at which all 4 bodies lie in the same plane. This result generalizes a known result for collinear instants ("syzygies") in the zero angular momentum planar 3-body problem, and extends to the $d+1$ body problem in $d$-space. The proof, for $d=3$, starts by identifying the center-of-mass zero configuration space with real $3 \times 3$ matrices, the coplanar configurations with matrices whose determinant is zero, and the mass metric with the Frobenius (standard Euclidean) norm. Let $S$ denote the signed distance from a matrix to the hypersurface of matrices with determinant zero. The proof hinges on establishing a harmonic oscillator type ODE for $S$ along solutions. Bounds on inter-body distances then yield an explicit lower bound $ω$ for the frequency of this oscillator, guaranteeing a degeneration within every time interval of length $π/ω$. The non-negativity of the curvature of oriented shape space (the quotient of configuration space by the rotation group) plays a crucial role in the proof.

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arXiv2018

Fractional clique decompositions of dense graphs

For each $r\ge 4$, we show that any graph $G$ with minimum degree at least $(1-1/100r)|G|$ has a fractional $K_r$-decomposition. This improves the best previous bounds on the minimum degree required to guarantee a fractional $K_r$-decomposition given by Dukes (for small $r$) and Barber, Kühn, Lo, Montgomery and Osthus (for large $r$), giving the first bound that is tight up to the constant multiple of $r$ (seen, for example, by considering Turán graphs). In combination with work by Glock, Kühn, Lo, Montgomery and Osthus, this shows that, for any graph $F$ with chromatic number $χ(F)\ge 4$, and any $\varepsilon>0$, any sufficiently large graph $G$ with minimum degree at least $(1-1/100χ(F)+\varepsilon)|G|$ has, subject to some further simple necessary divisibility conditions, an (exact) $F$-decomposition.

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arXiv2018

Spanning surfaces in 3-graphs

We prove a topological extension of Dirac's theorem suggested by Gowers in 2005: for any connected, closed surface $\mathscr{S}$, we show that any two-dimensional simplicial complex on $n$ vertices in which each pair of vertices belongs to at least $n/3 + o(n)$ facets contains a homeomorph of $\mathscr{S}$ spanning all the vertices. This result is asymptotically sharp, and implies in particular that any 3-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices with minimum codegree exceeding $n/3+o(n)$ contains a spanning triangulation of the $2$-sphere.

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arXiv2018

Metric cones, N-body collisions, and Marchal's lemma

Marchal's lemma is the basic tool for eliminating collisions when using the direct method of the calculus of variations to establish existence of "designer" solutions to the classical N-body problem. Our goal here is to understand why Marchal's lemma holds, by taking a metric geometry perspective and employing the Jacobi-Maupertuis [JM] metric reformulation of mechanics. Using analysis inspired by the conical metric nature of the standard Kepler problem at zero-energy, we are able to manufacture potentials, or "counterexamples", for which Marchal's lemma fails. These counterexamples overlap significantly with results obtained by Barutello et al. A novel feature in our proof for the counterexample is the use of piecewise constant potentials, and the resulting piecewise constant metrics.

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arXiv2017

Fractional Clique Decompositions of Dense Graphs and Hypergraphs

Our main result is that every graph $G$ on $n\ge 10^4r^3$ vertices with minimum degree $δ(G) \ge (1 - 1 / 10^4 r^{3/2} ) n$ has a fractional $K_r$-decomposition. Combining this result with recent work of Barber, Kühn, Lo and Osthus leads to the best known minimum degree thresholds for exact (non-fractional) $F$-decompositions for a wide class of graphs~$F$ (including large cliques). For general $k$-uniform hypergraphs, we give a short argument which shows that there exists a constant $c_k>0$ such that every $k$-uniform hypergraph $G$ on $n$ vertices with minimum codegree at least $(1- c_k /r^{2k-1}) n $ has a fractional $K^{(k)}_r$-decomposition, where $K^{(k)}_r$ is the complete $k$-uniform hypergraph on $r$ vertices. (Related fractional decomposition results for triangles have been obtained by Dross and for hypergraph cliques by Dukes as well as Yuster.) All the above new results involve purely combinatorial arguments. In particular, this yields a combinatorial proof of Wilson's theorem that every large $F$-divisible complete graph has an $F$-decomposition.

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arXiv2017

Free time minimizers for the planar three-body problem

Free time minimizers of the action (called"semi-static" solutions by Mañe) play a central role in the theory of weak KAM solutions to the Hamilton-Jacobi equation (see Fathi). We prove that any solution to Newton's three-body problem which is asymptotic to Lagrange's parabolic homothetic solution is eventually a free time minimizer. Conversely, we prove that every free time minimizer tends to Lagrange's solution, provided the mass ratios lie in a certain large open set of mass ratios. We were inspired by the work of Da Luz-Maderna who had shown that every free time minimizer for the N-body problem is parabolic, and therefore must be asymptotic to the set of central configurations. We exclude being asymptotic to Euler's central configurations by a second variation argument. Central configurations correspond to rest points for the McGehee blown-up dynamics. The large open set of mass ratios are those for which the linearized dynamics at each Euler rest point has a complex eigenvalue.

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arXiv2017

Rainbow spanning trees in properly coloured complete graphs

In this short note, we study pairwise edge-disjoint rainbow spanning trees in properly edge-coloured complete graphs, where a graph is rainbow if its edges have distinct colours. Brualdi and Hollingsworth conjectured that every $K_n$ properly edge-coloured by $n-1$ colours has $n/2$ edge-disjoint rainbow spanning trees. Kaneko, Kano and Suzuki later suggested this should hold for every properly edge-coloured $K_n$. Improving the previous best known bound, we show that every properly edge-coloured $K_n$ contains $Ω(n)$ pairwise edge-disjoint rainbow spanning trees. Independently, Pokrovskiy and Sudakov recently proved that every properly edge-coloured $K_n$ contains $Ω(n)$ isomorphic pairwise edge-disjoint rainbow spanning trees.

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arXiv2016

Constructing the Hyperbolic Plane as the reduction of a three-body problem

We construct the hyperbolic plane with its geodesic flow as the scale plus symmetry reduction of a three-body problem in the Euclidean plane. The potential is $-I/Δ^2$ where $I$ is the triangle's moment of inertia and $Δ$ its area. The reduction method uses the Jacobi-Maupertuis metric, following the author's earlier paper "Putting Hyperbolic Pants on a Three-body Problem".

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arXiv2016

Lagrangian Relations and Linear Point Billiards

Motivated by the high-energy limit of the $N$-body problem we construct non-deterministic billiard process. The billiard table is the complement of a finite collection of linear subspaces within a Euclidean vector space. A trajectory is a constant speed polygonal curve with vertices on the subspaces and change of direction upon hitting a subspace governed by `conservation of momentum' (mirror reflection). The itinerary of a trajectory is the list of subspaces it hits, in order. Two basic questions are: (A) Are itineraries finite? (B) What is the structure of the space of all trajectories having a fixed itinerary? In a beautiful series of papers Burago-Ferleger-Kononenko [BFK] answered (A) affirmatively by using non-smooth metric geometry ideas and the notion of a Hadamard space. We answer (B) by proving that this space of trajectories is diffeomorphic to a Lagrangian relation on the space of lines in the Euclidean space. Our methods combine those of BFK with the notion of a generating family for a Lagrangian relation.

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arXiv2016

A proof of Mader's conjecture on large clique subdivisions in $C_4$-free graphs

Given any integers $s,t\geq 2$, we show there exists some $c=c(s,t)>0$ such that any $K_{s,t}$-free graph with average degree $d$ contains a subdivision of a clique with at least $cd^{\frac{1}{2}\frac{s}{s-1}}$ vertices. In particular, when $s=2$ this resolves in a strong sense the conjecture of Mader in 1999 that every $C_4$-free graph has a subdivision of a clique with order linear in the average degree of the original graph. In general, the widely conjectured asymptotic behaviour of the extremal density of $K_{s,t}$-free graphs suggests our result is tight up to the constant $c(s,t)$.

math.CO↗

arXiv2016

Fractional Clique Decompositions of Dense Partite Graphs

We give a minimum degree condition sufficent to ensure the existence of a fractional $K_r$-decomposition in a balanced $r$-partite graph (subject to some further simple necessary conditions). This generalises the non-partite problem studied recently by Barber, Lo, Kühn, Osthus and the author, and the $3$-partite fractional $K_3$-decomposition problem studied recently by Dukes. Combining our result with recent work by Barber, Kühn, Lo, Osthus and Taylor, this gives a minimum degree condition sufficient to ensure the existence of a (non-fractional) $K_r$-decomposition in a balanced $r$-partite graph (subject to the same simple necessary conditions).

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arXiv2015

Syzygies in the two center problem

We give a complete symbolic dynamics description of the dynamics of Euler's problem of two fixed centers. By analogy with the 3-body problem we use the collinearities (or syzygies) of the three bodies as symbols. We show that motion without collision on regular tori of the regularised integrable system are given by so called Sturmian sequences. Sturmian sequences were introduced by Morse and Hedlund in 1940. Our main theorem is that the periodic Sturmian sequences are in one to one correspondence with the periodic orbits of the two center problem. Similarly, finite Sturmian sequences correspond to collision-collision orbits.

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arXiv2015

Blow-up for realizing homotopy classes in the three-body problem

This expository note describes McGehee blow-up \cite{McGehee} in its role as one of the main tools in my recent proof with Rick Moeckel \cite{RM2} that every free homotopy class for the planar three-body problem can be realized by a periodic solution. The main novelty is my use of energy-balance to motivate the transformation of McGehee. Another novelty is an explicit description of the blown-up reduced phase space for the planar N-body problem, $N \ge 3$ as a complex vector bundle over the half-line times complex projective $N-2$-space. The half line coordinate is the size of the labelled planar N-gon whose vertices are the instantaneous positions of the N bodies and the projective space coordinatizes the shape of this N-gon body.

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arXiv2015

Sard Property for the endpoint map on some Carnot groups

In Carnot-Caratheodory or sub-Riemannian geometry, one of the major open problems is whether the conclusions of Sard's theorem holds for the endpoint map, a canonical map from an infinite-dimensional path space to the underlying finite-dimensional manifold. The set of critical values for the endpoint map is also known as abnormal set, being the set of endpoints of abnormal extremals leaving the base point. We prove that a strong version of Sard's property holds for all step-2 Carnot groups and several other classes of Lie groups endowed with left-invariant distributions. Namely, we prove that the abnormal set lies in a proper analytic subvariety. In doing so we examine several characterizations of the abnormal set in the case of Lie groups.

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