Department of Mathematics

The arrow polynomial is an invariant of framed oriented virtual links that generalizes the virtual Kauffman bracket. In this paper, we define the homological arrow polynomial, which generalizes the arrow polynomial to framed oriented virtual links with labeled components. The key observation is that, given a link in a thickened surface, the homology class of the link defines a functional on the surface’s skein module, and by applying it to the image of the link in the skein module this gives a virtual link invariant. We give a graphical calculus for the homological arrow polynomial by taking the usual diagrams for the Kauffman bracket and including labeled “whiskers” that record intersection numbers with each labeled component of the link. We use the homological arrow polynomial to study [Formula: see text]-nullhomologous virtual links and checkerboard colorability, giving a new way to complete Imabeppu’s characterization of checkerboard colorability of virtual links with up to four crossings. We also prove a version of the Kauffman–Murasugi–Thistlethwaite theorem that the breadth of an evaluation of the homological arrow polynomial for an “h-reduced” diagram [Formula: see text] is [Formula: see text].

We show that the subgroup of the Picard group of a $p$-block of a finite group given by bimodules with endopermutation sources modulo the automorphism group of a source algebra is determined locally in terms of the fusion system on a defect group. We show that the Picard group of a block over the a complete discrete valuation ring ${\mathcal O}$ of characteristic zero with an algebraic closure $k$ of ${\mathbb F}_p$ as residue field is a colimit of finite Picard groups of blocks over $p$-adic subrings of ${\mathcal O}$. We apply the results to blocks with an abelian defect group and Frobenius inertial quotient, and specialise this further to blocks with cyclic or Klein four defect groups.

With the help of a generalization of the Fermat principle in general relativity, we show that chains in CR geometry are geodesics of a certain Kropina metric constructed from the CR structure. We study the projective equivalence of Kropina metrics and show that if the kernel distributions of the corresponding 1-forms are non-integrable then two projectively equivalent metrics are trivially projectively equivalent. As an application, we show that sufficiently many chains determine the CR structure up to conjugacy, generalizing and reproving the main result of [J.-H. Cheng, 1988]. The correspondence between geodesics of the Kropina metric and chains allows us to use the methods of metric geometry and the calculus of variations to study chains. We use these methods to re-prove the result of [H. Jacobowitz, 1985] that locally any two points of a strictly pseudoconvex CR manifolds can be joined by a chain. Finally, we generalize this result to the global setting by showing that any two points of a connected compact strictly pseudoconvex CR manifold which admits a pseudo-Einstein contact form with positive Tanaka-Webster scalar curvature can be joined by a chain.

In this article we define the $-_+$-construction and the $-^+$-construction, that was crucial in the theory of canonical induction formulas (see \cite{Boltje1998b}), in the setting of biset functors, thus providing the necessary framework to define and construct canonical induction formulas for representation rings that are most naturally viewed as biset functors. Additionally, this provides a unified approach to the study of a class of functors including the Burnside ring, the monomial Burnside ring and global representation ring.

In the 1990s, J. H. Conway published a combinatorial-geometric method for analyzing integer-valued binary quadratic forms (BQFs). Using a visualization he named the "topograph," Conway revisited the reduction of BQFs and the solution of quadratic Diophantine equations such as Pell's equation. It appears that the crux of his method is the coincidence between the arithmetic group [Formula: see text] and the Coxeter group of type [Formula: see text] There are many arithmetic Coxeter groups, and each may have unforeseen applications to arithmetic. We introduce Conway's topograph and generalizations to other arithmetic Coxeter groups. This includes a study of "arithmetic flags" and variants of binary quadratic forms.

The theory of biset functors, introduced by Serge Bouc, gives a unified treatment of operations in representation theory that are induced by permutation bimodules. In this paper, by considering fibered bisets, we introduce and describe the basic theory of fibered biset functors which is a natural framework for operations induced by monomial bimodules. The main result of this paper is the classification of simple fibered biset functors.

In this paper we prove a conjecture of Alexander and Currier that states, except for covering maps of equidistant surfaces in hyperbolic 3-space, a complete, nonnegatively curved immersed hypersurface in hyperbolic space is necessarily properly embedded.

In this paper, we establish compactness results of some class of conformally compact Einstein 4-manifolds. In the first part of the paper, we improve the earlier results obtained by Chang-Ge. In the second part of the paper, as applications, we derive some compactness results under perturbation conditions when the L^2-norm of the Weyl curvature is small. We also derive the global uniqueness of conformally compact Einstein metrics on the 4-Ball constructed in the earlier work of Graham-Lee.