Scientific phenomena are often studied through collections of related scalar fields such as data generated by simulation experiments that are parameter or time dependent . Exploration of such data requires robust measures to compare them in a feature aware and intuitive manner. Topological data analysis is a growing area that has had success in analyzing and visualizing scalar fields in a feature aware manner based on the topological features. Various data structures such as contour and merge trees, Morse-Smale complexes and extremum graphs have been developed to study scalar fields. The extremum graph is a topological data structure based on either the maxima or the minima of a scalar field. It preserves local geometrical structure by maintaining relative locations of extrema and their neighborhoods. It provides a suitable abstraction to study a collection of datasets where features are expressed by descending or ascending manifolds and their proximity is of importance. In this thesis, we design a measure to understand the similarity between scalar fields based on the extremum graph abstraction. We propose a topological structure called the complete extremum graph and define a distance measure on it that compares scalar fields in a feature aware manner. We design an algorithm for computing the distance and show its applications in analyzing time varying data such as understanding periodicity, feature correspondence and tracking, and identifying key frames.

In dieser Doktorarbeit werden wir das Renormierungsproblem von Gravitationstheorien im Kontext der Renormierungsgruppe (RG) unter Anwendung von perturbativen und nicht-perturbativen Methoden untersuchen. Insbesondere werden wir uns auf verschiedene Gravitationsmodelle und Näherungen konzentrieren, in welchen die zentrale Rolle von einem skalaren Freiheitsgrad eingenommen wird. Wir konzentrieren uns besonders auf zwei Ansätze für Quantengravitation, die in letzter Zeit viel Aufmerksamkeit erhalten haben, nämlich den asymptotisch sicheren Fall der Gravitation und die Hořava-Lifshitz Quantengravitation. Das Prinzip der Asymptotischen Sicherheit beruht auf der Annahme, dass das hochenergetische Gravitationsregime von einem nicht-Gaußschen Fixpunkt bestimmt wird, der nicht-perturbative Renormierung und Endlichkeit der Korrelationsfunktionen sicherstellt. Wir werden die Existenz eines solchen nicht-trivialen Fixpunktes mit Hilfe der funktionalen Renormierungsgruppe untersuchen. Insbesondere werden wir den einzigen konformen Freiheitsgrad quantisieren. Die Frage nach der Existenz eines nicht-Gaußschen Fixpunktes in einem unendlich- dimensionalen Parameterraum, das heißt für eine generische f(R)-Theorie, kann jedoch nicht mit einem solchen konform reduzierten Model analysiert werden. Deshalb werden wir es untersuchen, indem wir eine skalare dynamische Äquivalentstheorie, das heißt eine generische Brans-Dicke Theorie in der lokal-Potential Näherung mit ω = 0, quantisieren. Schließlich werden wir mittels einer perturbativen RG Methode die asymptotische Freiheit der Hořava-Lifshitz Gravitationstheorie analysieren. Diese Gravitationstheorie beruht auf der Entstehung einer Anisotropie zwischen Raum und Zeit, die Newtons Konstante zu einer marginalen Koppelung werden lässt und explizit die Unitarität bewahrt. Insbesondere werden wir die Einschleifenkorrektur in 2+1 Dimensionen berechnen, indem wir nur den konformen Freiheitsgrad quantisieren. / In this Ph.D. thesis we will study the issue of renormalizability of gravitation in the context of the renormalization group (RG), employing both perturbative and non-perturbative techniques. In particular, we will focus on different gravitational models and approximations in which a central role is played by a scalar degree of freedom, since their RG flow is easier to analyze. We restrict our interest in particular to two quantum gravity approaches that have gained a lot of attention recently, namely the asymptotic safety scenario for gravity and the Hořava-Lifshitz quantum gravity. In the so-called asymptotic safety conjecture the high energy regime of gravity is controlled by a non-Gaussian fixed point which ensures non-perturbative renormalizability and finiteness of the correlation functions. We will then investigate the existence of such a non trivial fixed point using the functional renormalization group, a continuum version of the non-perturbative Wilson’s renormalization group. In particular we will quantize the sole conformal degree of freedom, which is an approximation that has been shown to lead to a qualitatively correct picture. The question of the existence of a non-Gaussian fixed point in an infinite-dimensional parameter space, that is for a generic f(R) theory, cannot however be studied using such a conformally reduced model. Hence we will study it by quantizing a dynamically equivalent scalar-tensor theory, i.e. a generic Brans-Dicke theory with ω = 0 in the local potential approximation. Finally, we will investigate, using a perturbative RG scheme, the asymptotic freedom of the Hořava-Lifshitz gravity, that is an approach based on the emergence of an anisotropy between space and time which lifts the Newton’s constant to a marginal coupling and explicitly preserves unitarity. In particular we will evaluate the one-loop correction in 2+1 dimensions quantizing only the conformal degree of freedom.

Data from present day scientific simulations and observations of physical processes often consist of multiple scalar fields. It is important to study the interactions between the fields to understand the underlying phenomena. A visual representation of these interactions would assist the scientist by providing quick insights into complex relationships that exist between the fields. We describe new techniques for visual analysis of multifield scalar data where the relationships can be quantified by the gradients of the individual scalar fields and their mutual alignment. Empirically, gradients along with their mutual alignment have been shown to be a good indicator of the relationships between the different scalar variables. The Jacobi set, defined as the set of points where the gradients are linearly dependent, describes the relationship between the gradient fields. The Jacobi set of two piecewise linear functions may contain several components indicative of noisy or a feature-rich dataset. For two dimensional domains, we pose the problem of simplification as the extraction of level sets and offset contours and describe a robust technique to simplify and create a multi-resolution representation of the Jacobi set. Existing isosurface-based techniques for scalar data exploration like Reeb graphs, contour spectra, isosurface statistics, etc., study a scalar field in isolation. We argue that the identification of interesting isovalues in a multifield data set should necessarily be based on the interaction between the different fields. We introduce a variation density function that profiles the relationship between multiple scalar fields over isosurfaces of a given scalar field. This profile serves as a valuable tool for multifield data exploration because it provides the user with cues to identify interesting isovalues of scalar fields. Finally, we introduce a new multifield comparison measure to capture relationships between scalar variables. We also show that our measure is insensitive to noise in the scalar fields and to noise in their gradients. Further, it can be computed robustly and efficiently. The comparison measure can be used to identify regions of interest in the domain where interactions between the scalar fields are significant. Subsequent visualization of the data focuses on these regions of interest leading to effective visual analysis. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our techniques by applying them to real world data from different domains like combustion studies, climate sciences and computer graphics.

In dieser Arbeit berechnen wir die gravitativen Ein-Schleifen-Korrekturen zu den Propagatoren und Wechselwirkungen der Felder des Standardmodells der Elementarteilchenphysik. Wir betrachten hierzu ein höherdimensionales brane-world-Modell: Wärend die Gravitonen, die Austauchteilchen der Gravitationswechselwirkung, in der gesamten D-dimensionalen Raumzeit propagieren können, sind die Materiefelder an eine d-dimensionale Untermanigfaltigkeit (brane) gebunden. Um die divergenten Anteile der Ein-Schleifen-Diagramme zu bestimmen, entwickeln wir ein neues Regularisierungschema welches einerseits die Wardidentitäten der Yang-Mills-Theorie respektiert anderseits sensitiv für potenzartige Divergenzen ist. Wir berechnen die gravitativen Beiträge zu den beta-Funktionen der Yang-Mills-Eichtheorie, der quartischen Selbst-Wechselwirkung skalarer Felder und der Yukawa-Wechselwirkung zwischen Skalaren und Fermionen. Im physikalisch besonders interessanten Fall einer vier-dimensionalen Materie-brane verschwinden die gravitativen Beiträge zum Laufen der Yang-Mills-Kopplungskonstante. Die führenden Beiträge zum Laufen der anderen beiden Kopplungskonstanten sind positiv. Diese Ergebnisse sind unabhängig von der Anzahl der Extradimensionen in denen die Gravitonen propagieren können. Des Weiteren bestimmen wir alle gravitationsinduzierten Ein-Schleifen-Konterterme mit höheren kovarianten Ableitungen für skalare Felder, Dirac-Fermionen und Eichbosonen. Ein Vergleich dieser Konterterme mit den höheren Ableitungsoperatoren des Lee-Wick-Standardmodells zeigt, dass die Gravitationskorrekturen nicht auf letzte beschränkt sind. Eine Beziehung zwischen Quantengravitation und dem Lee-Wick-Standardmodell besteht somit nicht. / In this thesis, we derive the gravitational one-loop corrections to the propagators and interactions of the Standard Model field. We consider a higher dimensional brane world scenario: Here, gravitons can propagate in the whole D dimensional space-time whereas the matter fields are confined to a d dimensional sub-manifold (brane). In order to determine the divergent part of the one-loop diagrams, we develop a new regularisation scheme which is both sensitive for polynomial divergences and respects the Ward identities of the Yang-Mills theory. We calculate the gravitational contributions to the beta functions of non-Abelian gauge theories, the quartic scalar self-interaction and the Yukawa coupling between scalars and fermions. In the physically interesting case of a four dimensional matter brane, the gravitational contributions to the running of the Yang-Mills coupling constant vanish. The leading contributions to the other two couplings are positive. These results do not depend on the number of extra dimensions. We further compute the gravitationally induced one-loop counterterms with higher covariant derivatives for scalars, Dirac fermions and gauge bosons. In is shown that these counterterms do not coincide with the higher derivative terms in the Lee-Wick standard model. A possible connection between quantum gravity and the latter cannot be inferred.