The aim of the paper is to investigate resonances in quantum graphs with a general self-adjoint coupling in the vertices and their trajectories with respect to varying edge lengths. We derive formulae determining the Taylor expansion of the resonance pole position up to the second order, which represent, in particular, a counterpart to the Fermi rule derived recently by Lee and Zworski for graphs with the standard coupling. Furthermore, we discuss the asymptotic behavior of the resonances in the high-energy regime in the situation where the leads are attached through or s conditions, and we prove that in the case of s coupling the resonances approach to the real axis with the increasing real parts as O((Rek)2).

We discuss a marginal deformation of the SL(2,R) x SU(2) x U(1)^4 WZW model, which describes string theory on AdS_3 x S^3 x T^4, that corresponds to warping the S^3 factor. This deformation breaks part of the N=(4,4) supersymmetry of the undeformed dual CFT to N=(0,4) supersymmetry. In the spirit of work by Giveon, Kutasov, and Seiberg, we construct the asymptotic spacetime symmetry algebra from worldsheet operators and find a restoration of (4,4) supersymmetry at discrete values of the deformation parameter. We explain this result from various perspectives: the worldsheet, supergravity, and from the singular D1-D5 CFT. The supergravity analysis includes an asymptotic symmetry computation of the level of the affine SU(2) R-symmetry, which arises purely from B-field contributions.

In the paper [J.-S. Chen, S. Pan, A family of NCP-functions and a descent method for the nonlinear complementarity problem, Computational Optimization and Applications, 40 (2008) 389404], the authors proposed a derivative-free descent algorithm for nonlinear complementarity problems (NCPs) by the generalized FischerBurmeister merit function: p (a, b)= 1 2 [(a, b) p(a+ b)] 2, and observed that the choice of the parameter p has a great influence on the numerical performance of the algorithm. In this paper, we analyze the phenomenon theoretically for a derivative-free descent algorithm which is based on a penalized form of p and uses a different direction from that of Chen and Pan. More specifically, we show that the algorithm proposed is globally convergent and has a locally R-linear convergence rate, and furthermore, its convergence rate will become worse when the parameter p decreases

The geometry arising from Michelson &amp; Strominger's study of =4<i>B</i> supersymmetric quantum mechanics with superconformal <i>D</i>(2, 1; )-symmetry is a hyperKhler manifold with torsion (HKT) together with a special homothety. It is shown that different parameters are related via changes in potentials for the HKT target spaces. For 0, 1, we describe how each such HKT manifold <i>M</i> ^<i>4m</i> is derived from a space <i>N</i> ^<i>4m4</i> which is quaternionic Khler with torsion and carries an Abelian instanton.

This paper attempts to relate some ideas of Grothendieck in his Esquisse d'un programme and some of the recent results on 2-dimensional topology and geometry. Especially, we shall discuss the Teichmller theory, the mapping class groups, $ SL (2,\bold C) $ representation variety of surface groups, and Thurston's theory of measured laminations.