The computation of a rigid body transformation which optimally aligns a set of measurement points with a surface and related registration problems are studied from the viewpoint of geometry and optimization.We provide a convergence analysis for widely used registration algorithms such as ICP, using either closest points (Besl and McKay [2]) or tangent planes at closest points (Chen and Medioni [4]), and for a recently developed approach based on quadratic approximants of the squared distance function [24]. ICP based on closest points exhibits local linear convergence only. Its counterpart which minimizes squared distances to the tangent planes at closest points is a Gauss-Newton iteration; it achieves local quadratic convergence for a zero residual problem and - if enhanced by regularization and step size control - comes close to quadratic convergence in many realistic scenarios. Quadratically convergent algorithms are based on the approach in [24]. The theoretical results are supported by a number of experiments; there, we also compare the algorithms with respect to global convergence behavior, stability and running time.

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We study BPS states of 5d N=1 SU(2) Yang-Mills theory on S^1×R^4. Geometric engineering relates these to enumerative invariants for the local Hirzebruch surface F_0. We illustrate computations of Vafa-Witten invariants via exponential networks, verifying fiber-base symmetry of the spectrum at certain points in moduli space, and matching with mirror descriptions based on quivers and exceptional collections. Albeit infinite, parts of the spectrum organize in families described by simple algebraic equations. Varying the radius of the M-theory circle interpolates smoothly with the spectrum of 4d N=2 Seiberg-Witten theory, recovering spectral networks in the limit.

We propose second order accurate discontinuous Galerkin (DG) schemes which satisfy a strict maximum principle for general nonlinear convection-diffusion equations on unstructured triangular meshes. Motivated by genuinely high order maximum-principle-satisfying DG schemes for hyperbolic conservation laws, we prove that under suitable time step restriction for forward Euler time stepping, for general nonlinear convection-diffusion equations, the same scaling limiter coupled with second order DG methods preserves the physical bounds indicated by the initial condition while maintaining uniform second order accuracy. Similar to the purely convection cases, the limiters are mass conservative and easy to implement. Strong stability preserving (SSP) high order time discretizations will keep the maximum principle. Following the idea in earlier work, we extend the schemes to two-dimensional convection-diffusion equations on triangular meshes. There are no geometric constraints on the mesh such as angle acuteness. Numerical results including incompressible Navier-Stokes equations are presented to validate and demonstrate the effectiveness of the numerical methods.