We construct a conformally invariant random family of closed curves in the plane by welding of random homeomorphisms of the unit circle. The homeomorphism is constructed using the exponential of$βX$, where X is the restriction of the 2-dimensional free field on the circle and the parameter$β$is in the “high temperature” regime $$ \beta < \sqrt {2} $$ . The welding problem is solved by studying a non-uniformly elliptic Beltrami equation with a random complex dilatation. For the existence a method of Lehto is used. This requires sharp probabilistic estimates to control conformal moduli of annuli and they are proven by decomposing the free field as a sum of independent fixed scale fields and controlling the correlations of the complex dilatation restricted to dyadic cells of various scales. For the uniqueness we invoke a result by Jones and Smirnov on conformal removability of Hölder curves. Our curves are closely related to SLE($ϰ$) for$ϰ$<4.

We prove the complete monotonicity on $${(0, \infty)^{n}}$$ for suitable inverse powers of the spanning-tree polynomials of graphs and, more generally, of the basis generating polynomials of certain classes of matroids. This generalizes a result of Szegő and answers, among other things, a long-standing question of Lewy and Askey concerning the positivity of Taylor coefficients for certain rational functions. Our proofs are based on two ab-initio methods for proving that $${P^{-\beta}}$$ is completely monotone on a convex cone$C$: the determinantal method and the quadratic-form method. These methods are closely connected with harmonic analysis on Euclidean Jordan algebras (or equivalently on symmetric cones). We furthermore have a variety of constructions that, given such polynomials, can create other ones with the same property: among these are algebraic analogues of the matroid operations of deletion, contraction, direct sum, parallel connection, series connection and 2-sum. The complete monotonicity of $${P^{-\beta}}$$ for some $${\beta > 0}$$ can be viewed as a strong quantitative version of the half-plane property (Hurwitz stability) for$P$, and is also related to the Rayleigh property for matroids.

We prove that for any free ergodic probability measure-preserving action $${\mathbb{F}_n \curvearrowright (X, \mu)}$$ of a free group on$n$generators $${\mathbb{F}_n, 2\leq n \leq \infty}$$ , the associated group measure space II_{1}factor $${L^\infty (X)\rtimes \mathbb{F}_n}$$ has$L$^{∞}($X$) as its unique Cartan subalgebra, up to unitary conjugacy. We deduce that group measure space II_{1}factors arising from actions of free groups with different number of generators are never isomorphic. We actually prove unique Cartan decomposition results for II_{1}factors arising from arbitrary actions of a much larger family of groups, including all free products of amenable groups and their direct products.

In this paper we prove several formulae that enable one to capture the singular portion of the measure derivative of a function of bounded variation as a limit of non-local functionals. One special case shows that rescalings of the fractional Laplacian of a function $u \in SBV$ converge strictly to the singular portion of $Du$.

This paper deals with the moment problem on a (not necessarily finitely generated) commutative unital real algebra A. We define moment functionals on A as linear functionals which can be written as integrals over characters of A with respect to cylinder measures. Our main results provide such integral representations for A+–positive linear functionals (generalized Haviland theorem) and for positive functionals fulfilling Carleman conditions. As an application, we solve the moment problem for the symmetric algebra S(V) of a real vector space V. As a byproduct, we obtain new approaches to the moment problem on S(V) for a nuclear space V and to the integral decomposition of continuous positive functionals on a barrelled nuclear topological algebra A.