We prove a quantitative bi-Lipschitz non-embedding theorem for the Heisenberg group with its Carnot–Carathéodory metric and apply it to give a lower bound on the integrality gap of the Goemans–Linial semidefinite relaxation of the sparsest cut problem.

Let$X$and$Y$be smooth varieties of dimensions$n$−1 and$n$over an arbitrary algebraically closed field,$f: X→Y$a finite map that is birational onto its image. Suppose that$f$is curvilinear; that is, for all$xεX$, the Jacobian ϱ$f(x)$has rank at least$n$−2. For$r$≥1, consider the subscheme$N$_{$r$}of$Y$defined by the ($r$−1)th Fitting ideal of the $$\mathcal{O}_Y $$ -module $$f_ * \mathcal{O}_X $$ , and set$M$_{$r$}∶=$f$^{−1}$N$_{$r$}. In this setting—in fact, in a more general setting—we prove the following statements, which show that$M$_{$r$}and$N$_{$r$}behave like reasonable schemes of source and target$r$-fold points of$f$.

We prove several new results on the absolutely continuous spectra of perturbed one-dimensional Stark operators. First, we find new classes of perturbations, characterized mainly by smoothness conditions, which preserve purely absolutely continuous spectrum. Then we establish stability of the absolutely continuous spectrum in more general situations, where imbedded singular spectrum may occur. We present two kinds of optimal conditions for the stability of absolutely continuous spectrum: decay and smoothness. In the decay direction, we show that a sufficient (in the power scale) condition is |$q$($x$)|≤$C$(1+|$x$|)^{−1/4−ε}; in the smoothness direction, a sufficient condition in Hölder classes is$q$∈$C$^{1/2+ε}($R$). On the other hand, we show that there exist potentials which both satisfy |$q$($x$)|≤$C$(1+|$x$|)^{−1/4}and belong to$C$^{1/2}($R$) for which the spectrum becomes purely singular on the whole real axis, so that the above results are optimal within the scales considered.

This paper gives a partial answer to a problem raised by Griffiths in [4], which is a kind of converse of Abel’s theorem.

We study the action of the group of contact diffeomorphisms on CR deformations of compact three dimensional CR manifolds. Using anisotropic function spaces and an anisotropic structure on the space of contact diffeomorphisms, we establish the existence of local transverse slices to the action of the contact diffeomorphism group in the neighborhood of a fixed embeddable strongly pseudoconvex CR structure.