Kaimanovich (2003) [9] introduced the concept of augmented tree on the symbolic space of a selfsimilar set. It is hyperbolic in the sense of Gromov, and it was shown by Lau and Wang (2009) [12] that under the open set condition, a self-similar set can be identified with the hyperbolic boundary of the tree. In the paper, we investigate in detail a class of simple augmented trees and the Lipschitz equivalence of such trees. The main purpose is to use this to study the Lipschitz equivalence problem of the totally disconnected self-similar sets which has been undergoing some extensive development recently.

To study arithmetic structures of natural numbers, we introduce a notion of entropy of arithmetic functions, called anqie entropy. This entropy possesses some crucial properties common to both Shannon's and Kolmogorov's entropies. We show that all arithmetic functions with zero anqie entropy form a C*-algebra. Its maximal ideal space defines our arithmetic compactification of natural numbers, which is totally disconnected but not extremely disconnected. We also compute the $K$-groups of the space of all continuous functions on the arithmetic compactification. As an application, we show that any topological dynamical system with topological entropy $\lambda$, can be approximated by symbolic dynamical systems with entropy less than or equal to $\lambda$.

We quantized the full Einstein equations in a globally hyperbolic spacetime $N=N^{n+1}$, $n\ge 3$, and found solutions of the resulting hyperbolic equation in a fiber bundle $E$ which can be expressed as a product of spatial eigenfunctions (eigendistributions) and temporal eigenfunctions. The spatial eigenfunctions form a basis in an appropriate Hilbert space while the temporal eigenfunctions are solutions to a second order ordinary differential equation in $\R[]_+$. In case $n\ge 17$ and provided the cosmological constant $\Lam$ is negative the temporal eigenfunctions are eigenfunctions of a self-adjoint operator $\hat H_0$ such that the eigenvalues are countable and the eigenfunctions form an orthonormal basis of a Hilbert space.

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In this paper, we prove a conjecture of Kottwitz and Rapoport on a union of (generalized) affine Deligne-Lusztig varieties $X(\mu, b)_J$ for a $p$-adic group $G$ and its parahoric subgroup $P_J$. We show that $X(\mu, b)_J \neq \emptyset$ if and only if the group-theoretic version of Mazur's inequality is satisfied. In the process, we obtain a generalization of Grothendieck's conjecture on the closure relation of $\s$-conjugacy classes of a twisted loop group.