The VC Dimension of Metric Balls under Fréchet and Hausdorff Distances

The Vapnik–Chervonenkis dimension provides a notion of complexity for systems of sets. If the VC dimension is small, then knowing this can drastically simplify fundamental computational tasks such as classification, range counting, and density estimation through the use of sampling bounds. We analyze set systems where the ground set X is a set of polygonal curves in $$\mathbb {R}^d$$ R d and the sets $$\mathcal {R}$$ R are metric balls defined by curve similarity metrics, such as the Fréchet distance and the Hausdorff distance, as well as their discrete counterparts. We derive upper and lower bounds on the VC dimension that imply useful sampling bounds in the setting that the number of curves is large, but the complexity of the individual curves is small. Our upper and lower bounds are either near-quadratic or near-linear in the complexity of the curves that define the ranges and they are logarithmic in the complexity of the curves that define the ground set.

Shrinking targets for the geodesic flow on geometrically finite hyperbolic manifolds

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>Let <inline-formula><tex-math id="M1">\begin{document}$ \mathscr{M} $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> be a geometrically finite hyperbolic manifold. We present a very general theorem on the shrinking target problem for the geodesic flow, using its exponential mixing. This includes a strengthening of Sullivan's logarithm law for the excursion rate of the geodesic flow. More generally, we prove logarithm laws for the first hitting time for shrinking cusp neighborhoods, shrinking tubular neighborhoods of a closed geodesic, and shrinking metric balls, as well as give quantitative estimates for the time a generic geodesic spends in such shrinking targets.</p>

Brownian Motions and Heat Kernel Lower Bounds on Kähler and Quaternion Kähler Manifolds

We study the radial parts of the Brownian motions on Kähler and quaternion Kähler manifolds. Thanks to sharp Laplacian comparison theorems, we deduce as a consequence a sharp Cheeger–Yau-type lower bound for the heat kernels of such manifolds and also sharp Cheng’s type estimates for the Dirichlet eigenvalues of metric balls.

Volume Growth, Curvature, and Buser-Type Inequalities in Graphs

We study the volume growth of metric balls as a function of the radius in discrete spaces and focus on the relationship between volume growth and discrete curvature. We improve volume growth bounds under a lower bound on the so-called Ollivier curvature and discuss similar results under other types of discrete Ricci curvature. Following recent work in the continuous setting of Riemannian manifolds (by the 1st author), we then bound the eigenvalues of the Laplacian of a graph under bounds on the volume growth. In particular, $\lambda _2$ of the graph can be bounded using a weighted discrete Hardy inequality and the higher eigenvalues of the graph can be bounded by the eigenvalues of a tridiagonal matrix times a multiplicative factor, both of which only depend on the volume growth of the graph. As a direct application, we relate the eigenvalues to the Cheeger isoperimetric constant. Using these methods, we describe classes of graphs for which the Cheeger inequality is tight on the 2nd eigenvalue (i.e. the 1st nonzero eigenvalue). We also describe a method for proving Buser’s Inequality in graphs, particularly under a lower bound assumption on curvature.

Volumes in the Uniform Infinite Planar Triangulation: From Skeletons to Generating Functions

We develop a method to compute the generating function of the number of vertices inside certain regions of the Uniform Infinite Planar Triangulation (UIPT). The computations are mostly combinatorial in flavour and the main tool is the decomposition of the UIPT into layers, called the skeleton decomposition, introduced by Krikun [20]. In particular, we get explicit formulas for the generating functions of the number of vertices inside hulls (or completed metric balls) centred around the root, and the number of vertices inside geodesic slices of these hulls. We also recover known results about the scaling limit of the volume of hulls previously obtained by Curien and Le Gall by studying the peeling process of the UIPT in [17].

On the Hausdorff Dimension of CAT(κ) Surfaces

We prove that a closed surface with a CAT(κ) metric has Hausdorff dimension = 2, and that there are uniform upper and lower bounds on the two-dimensional Hausdorff measure of small metric balls. We also discuss a connection between this uniformity condition and some results on the dynamics of the geodesic flow for such surfaces. Finally,we give a short proof of topological entropy rigidity for geodesic flow on certain CAT(−1) manifolds.