First published in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society in Vol.35, 1988, published by the American Mathematical Society

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This thesis discusses elliptic geometry including the order and incidence properties, projective properties and congruence properties.

In this dissertation, we generalize the work of Bender and co-workers to derive new partially-integrable hierarchies of various PT -symmetric, nonlinear partial differential equations. The possible integrable members are identified employing the Painlev´e Test, a necessary but not sufficient integrability condition, and are indexed by the integer n, corresponding to the negative of the order of the dominant pole in the singular part of the Painlev´e expansion for the solution. For the PT -symmetric Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation, as with some other hierarchies, the first or n = 1 equation fails the test, the n = 2 member corresponds to the regular KdV equation, while the remainder form an entirely new, possibly integrable hierarchy. Integrability properties of the n = 3 and n = 4 members, typical of partially-integrable systems, including B¨acklund Transformations, a ’near-Lax Pair’, and analytic solutions are derived. The solutions, or solitary waves, prove to be algebraic in form, and the extended homogeneous balance technique appears to be the most efficient in exposing the near-Lax Pair. The PT -symmetric Burgers’ equation fails the Painlev´e Test for its n = 2 case, but special solutions are nonetheless obtained. Also, PT -Symmetric hierarchies of 2+1 Burgers’ and Kadomtsev-Petviashvili equations, which may prove useful in applications are analyzed. Extensions of the Painlev´e Test and Invariant Painlev´e analysis to 2+1 dimensions are utilized, and BTs and special solutions are found for those cases that pass the Painlev´e Test.

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Let X be a simply connected, compact Riemannian symmetric space. We can represent X as the homogeneous space U/K, where U is a simply connected compact Lie group, and K is the fixed point set of an involution θ of U. Let G be the complexification of U. We consider the intersections of the image of the Cartan embedding Φ : U/K → U ⊂ G : uK → uu⁻ᶿ with the strata of the Birkhoff (or triangular, or LDU) decomposition G = ⫫(w∈W) ∑(G/w), ∑(G/w) = N⁻wHN⁺ relative to a θ-stable decomposition of the Lie algebra, g = n⁻ ⊕h ⊕ n⁺. For a generic element g in this intersection, g ∈ Φ(U/K) ∩ ∑(G/1), this yields a unique triangular factorization g = ldu. Our main contribution is to produce explicit formulas for the diagonal term d in classical cases, using Cayley coordinates (this choice of coordinate is motivated by considerations beyond sheer convenience). These formulas have several applications: 1) we can compute π₀(Φ(U/K) \ ∩ ∑(G/1) ) explicitly; 2) we can compute ʃ(Φ(U/K))ᵃΦ^-iλ (where ᵃΦ is the positive part of d) using elementary techniques in rank 1 cases; 3) they are useful in explicitly calculating Evens-Lu Poisson structures on U=K (see [Caine(2006)]). Our set-up involves choosing specific representations of the various u in su(n;C) that are compatible with θ; that is, θ fixes each of the subspaces n⁻; h; and n⁺ which, in our setup, always consist of strictly lower triangular, diagonal, and strictly upper triangular matrices, respectively. The formulas contain determinants such as det(1 + X), where X is in ip, the -1-eigenspace of θ acting on the Lie algebra u. Due to the relatively sparse nature of these matrices, these determinants are often easily calculable, and we illustrate this with many examples.

A Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) changes the basis of a group algebra from the standard basis to a Fourier basis. An efficient application of a DFT is called a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). This research pertains to a particular type of FFT called Decimation in Frequency (DIF). An efficient DIF has been established for commutative algebra; however, a successful analogue for non-commutative algebra has not been derived. However, we currently have a promising DIF algorithm for CSn called Orrison-DIF (ODIF). In this paper, I will formally introduce the ODIF and establish a bound on the operation count of the algorithm.

The abelian sandpile model, or chip firing game, is a cellular automaton on finite directed graphs often used to describe the phenomenon of self organized criticality. Here we present a thorough introduction to the theory of sandpiles. Additionally, we define a symmetric sandpile configuration, and show that such configurations form a subgroup of the sandpile group. Given a graph, we explore the existence of a quotient graph whose sandpile group is isomorphic to the symmetric subgroup of the original graph. These explorations are motivated by possible applications to counting the domino tilings of a 2n × 2n grid.

The regular representation of the symmetric group Sn is a vector space of dimension n! with many interesting invariant subspaces. The projections of a vector onto these subspaces may be computed by first considering projections onto certain basis elements in the subspace and then recombining later. If all of these projections are kept, it creates an explosion in the size of the data, making it difficult to store and work with. This is a study of techniques to compress this computed data such that it is of the same dimmension as the original vector.

Résumé de la thèse : ce travail porte sur la notion d'espace symétrique symplectique extrinsèque. Ces espaces sont des espaces symétriques symplectiques dont la structure est induite par le plongement dans variété symplectique ambiante munie d'une connexion. Par analogie à la théorie standard des espaces symétriques, nous démontrons un théorème d'équivalence entre les espaces symétriques symplectiques extrinsèques d'une variété qui est elle-même un espace symétrique symplectique. La définition d'un espace symétrique symplectique extrinsèque fait intervenir l'existence d'affinités globales de la variété ambiante, les ``symétries extrinsèques', qui induisent la structure symétrique de la sous-variété ; ceci mène à poser une question du type : quelles sont les variétés possédant ``beaucoup' de ces affinités~? Une question précise ainsi qu'une réponse sont fournies dans un contexte où la variété ambiante est seulement supposée munie d'une structure symplectique et d'une connexion symplectiques. Nous considérons également le cas où ces symétries commutent avec un champ $K$ d'endomorphismes symplectiques fixé de la variété, de carré $pmId$. Nous définissons une notion de courbure sectionnelle pour plans $K$-stables et montrons que les espaces à $K$-courbure sectionnelle constantes sont localement symétriques de type Ricci. Par suite nous étudions les espaces symétriques symplectiques extrinsèques dans un espace vectoriel symplectique. Nous montrons par exemple qu'un tel espace, s'ils est de dimension deux, est forcément intrinsèquement plat (c.-à-d. à courbure intrinsèque nulle), mais que son image n'est pas forcément un plan affin de l'espace vectoriel ambiant. Nous décrivons en fait explicitement tous les espaces symétriques symplectiques extrinsèques, dans un espace vectoriel, dont la courbure intrinsèque s'annule identiquement. Nous décrivons également une famille d'exemples d'espaces extrinsèques, dont nous montrons qu'elle fournit la totalité des espaces extrinsèques de codimension $2$, dans un espace vectoriel. Enfin, nous décrivons quelques exemples d'espaces symétriques symplectiques extrinsèques qui sont totalement géodésiques, dans un espace de type Ricci particulier.