a class of superrigid group von neumann algebras we prove that for any group g in a fairly large class of generalized wreath product groups the associated von neumann algebra lg completely remembers the group g more precisely if lg is isomorphic to the von neumann algebra l of an arbitrary countable group then must be isomorphic to g this represents the rst superrigidity result pertaining to group von neumann algebras

cartan subalgebras in c algebras existence and uniqueness we initiate the study of cartan subalgebras in c algebras with a particular focus on existence and uniqueness questions for homogeneous c algebras these questions can be analyzed systematically using the theory of fiber bundles for group c algebras while we are able to find cartan subalgebras in c algebras of many connected lie groups there are classes of discrete groups for instance non abelian free groups whose reduced group c algebras do not have any cartan subalgebras moreover we show that uniqueness of cartan subalgebras usually fails for classifiable c algebras however distinguished cartan subalgebras exist in some cases for instance in nuclear uniform roe algebras

some unique group measure space decomposition results using an approach emerging from the theory of closable deriva tions on von neumann algebras we exhibit a class of groups cr satisfying the following property given any groups 1 2 2 cr then any free ergodic measure preserving action on a probability space 1 2 y x gives rise to a von neumann algebra with unique group measure space cartan subalgebra pairing this result with popa s orbit equivalence superrigidity theorem we obtain new examples of w superrigid actions

fast matching algorithms for points on a polygon given a set p of 2n points on the boundary of a polygon consider the complete graph whose vertex set is p and whose edges are assigned weights equal to the euclidean distance between their endpoints if the endpoints see each other in the polygon and infty otherwise the problem of finding a minimum weightperfect matching is investigated in this graph and an o n log n time algorithm is obtained if the polygon is convex an o n log 2 n time algorithm is obtained if the polygon is simple but not convex similar results are obtained for the assignment problem and the maximum weight problem

ccap for universal discrete quantum groups we show that the discrete duals of the free orthogonal quantum groups have the haagerup property and the completely contractive approximation property analogous results hold for the free unitary quantum groups and the quantum automorphism groups of finite dimensional c algebras the proof relies on the monoidal equivalence between free orthogonal quantum groups and su q 2 quantum groups on the construction of a sufficient supply of bounded central functionals for su q 2 quantum groups and on the free product techniques of ricard and xu our results generalize previous work in the kac setting due to brannan on the haagerup property and due to the second author on the ccap

orbit equivalence rigidity and bounded cohomology we establish new results and introduce new methods in the theory of measurable orbit equivalence using bounded cohomology of group representations our rigidity statements hold for a wide uncountable class of groups arising from negative curvature geometry amongst our applications are a measurable mostow type rigidity theorems for products of negatively curved groups b prime factorization results for measure equivalence c superrigidity for orbit equivalence d the first examples of continua of type ii1 equivalence relations with trivial outer automorphism group that are mutually not stably isomorphic

peripheral fillings of relatively hyperbolic groups in this paper a group theoretic version of dehn surgery is studied starting with an arbitrary relatively hyperbolic group g we define a peripheral filling procedure which produces quotients of g by imitating the effect of the dehn filling of a complete finite volume hyperbolic 3 manifold m on the fundamental group 1 m the main result of the paper is an algebraic counterpart of thurston s hyperbolic dehn surgery theorem we also show that peripheral subgroups of g almost have the congruence extension property and the group g is approximated in an algebraic sense by its quotients obtained by peripheral fillings

w superrigidity for bernoulli actions of property t groups we consider group measure space 1 factors m l x arising from bernoulli actions of icc property t groups more generally of groups containing an infinite normal subgroup with the relative property t and prove a rigidity result for homomorphisms m overbar m we deduce that the action x is w superrigid i e if y is any free ergodic measure preserving action such that the factors m l x and m l y are isomorphic then the actions x and y must be conjugate moreover we show that if p m 1 is a projection then pmp does not admit a group measure space decomposition nor a group von neumann algebra decomposition the latter under the additional assumption that is torsion free we also prove a rigidity result for homomorphisms m m this time for in a larger class of groups than above now including products of non amenable groups for certain groups e g f 2 f 2 we deduce that m does not embed into pmp for any projection p m 1 and obtain a description of the endomorphism semigroup of m

on the structural theory of ii1 factors of negatively curved groups ii actions by product groups abstract this paper contains a series of structural results for von neumann algebras arising from measure preserving actions by product groups on probability spaces expanding upon the methods used earlier by the first two authors we obtain new examples of strongly solid factors as well as von neumann algebras with unique or no cartan subalgebra for instance we show that every ii 1 factor associated with a weakly amenable group in the class s of ozawa is strongly solid there is also the following product version of this result any maximal abelian subalgebra of any ii 1 factor associated with a finite product of weakly amenable groups in the class s of ozawa has an amenable normalizing algebra finally pairing some of these results with a cocycle superrigidity result of ioana it follows that compact actions by finite products of lattices in s p n 1 n 2 are virtually w superrigid

a domain decomposition method for pseudo spectral electromagnetic simulations of plasmas abstract pseudo spectral electromagnetic solvers i e representing the fields in fourier space have extraordinary precision in particular haber et al presented in 1973 a pseudo spectral solver that integrates analytically the solution over a finite time step under the usual assumption that the source is constant over that time step yet pseudo spectral solvers have not been widely used due in part to the difficulty for efficient parallelization owing to global communications associated with global ffts on the entire computational domains a method for the parallelization of electromagnetic pseudo spectral solvers is proposed and tested on single electromagnetic pulses and on particle in cell simulations of the wakefield formation in a laser plasma accelerator the method takes advantage of the properties of the discrete fourier transform the linearity of maxwell s equations and the finite speed of light for limiting the communications of data within guard regions between neighboring computational domains although this requires a small approximation test results show that no significant error is made on the test cases that have been presented the proposed method opens the way to solvers combining the favorable parallel scaling of standard finite difference methods with the accuracy advantages of pseudo spectral methods

irreducible affine varieties over a free group i irreducibility of quadratic equations and nullstellensatz the object of this paper which consists of two parts is to describe irreducible varieties over free groups and to characterize finitely generated fully residually free groups we prove that any variety over a free group f can be defined by a finite number of systems of equations s 1 in triangular form where quadratic words play the role of leading terms algebraically irreducible varieties are exactly the varieties whose coordinate groups are fully residually f the crucial point of the classification of fully residually free groups is to prove that the coordinate groups of irreducible varieties are embeddable into lyndon s free z x group f since every finitely generated fully residually free group is a free factor of the coordinate group of an irreducible variety and the group f is fully residually f we obtain a characterization of finitely generated fully residually free groups as subgroups of f the group f and its subgroups have been studied extensively during the last several years in particular every finitely generated subgroup of f hence every finitely generated fully residually free group can be obtained from free abelian groups of finite rank by finitely many free products with amalgamation and hnn extensions of the type where amalgamated and associated subgroups are free abelian of finite rank in particular this implies that every finitely generated fully residually free group is finitely presented there are three parts to this paper algebraic geometry over free groups the theory of free exponential groups and makanin razborov s machinery to deal with equations over free groups 11 14 13 the algebraic geometry approach has been shown to be very usefull in dealing with equations over groups it provides necessary topological means and a method to transcribe geometric notions into pure group theoretic language following baumslag myasnikov remeslennikov 1 we use the standard algebraic geometry notions such as variety zariski topology irreducibility of varieties radicals and coordinate groups some of the ideas of the algebraic geometry approach go back to r lyndon 9 e rips j stallings 16

a convergent born series for solving the inhomogeneous helmholtz equation in arbitrarily large media we present a fast method for numerically solving the inhomogeneous helmholtz equation our iterative method is based on the born series which we modified to achieve convergence for scattering media of arbitrary size and scattering strength compared to pseudospectral time domain simulations our modified born approach is two orders of magnitude faster and nine orders of magnitude more accurate in benchmark tests in 1 2 and 3 dimensional systems

one cohomology and the uniqueness of the group measure space decomposition of a ii1 factor we provide a unified and self contained treatment of several of the recent uniqueness theorems for the group measure space decomposition of a ii1 factor we single out a large class of groups characterized by a one cohomology property and prove that for every free ergodic probability measure preserving action of the associated ii1 factor has a unique group measure space cartan subalgebra up to unitary conjugacy our methods follow closely a recent article of chifan peterson but we replace the usage of peterson s unbounded derivations by thomas sinclair s dilation into a malleable deformation by a one parameter group of automorphisms

measure equivalence rigidity of the mapping class group we show that the mapping class group of a compact orientable surface with higher complexity satisfies the following rigidity in the sense of measure equivalence if the mapping class group is measure equivalent to a discrete group then they are commensurable up to finite kernels moreover we describe all locally compact second countable groups containing a lattice isomorphic to the mapping class group we obtain similar results for finite direct products of mapping class groups

irreducible affine varieties over a free group ii systems in triangular quasi quadratic form and description of residually free groups abstract we shall prove the conjecture of myasnikov and remeslennikov 4 which states that a finitely generated group is fully residually free every finite set of nontrivial elements has nontrivial images under some homomorphism into a free group if and only if it is embeddable in the lyndon s exponential groupfz x which is thez x completion of the free group herez x is the ring of polynomials of one variable with integer coefficients historically lyndon s attempts to solve tarski s famous problem concerning the elementary equivalence of free groups of different ranks led him to introducefz x an free group is a groupgsuch that the class of formulas true ing is the same as the class of formulas true in a nonabelian free group a finitely generated group is free if and only if it is fully residually free 22 our result gives an algebraic description of free groups we shall give an algorithm to represent a solution set of an arbitrary system of equations overfas a union of finite number of irreducible components in the zariski topology onfn the solution set for every system is contained in the solution set of a finite number of systems in triangular form with quadratic words as leading terms the possibility of such a decomposition for a solution set was conjectured by razborov in 20 and also by rips we shall give a description of systems of equations determining irreducible components using methods developed in 13 19 it is possible to find some of these methods in 18 we are thankful to e rips for attracting our attention to these techniques

w superrigidity of mixing gaussian actions of rigid groups abstract we generalize w superrigidity results about bernoulli actions of rigid groups to general mixing gaussian actions we thus obtain the following if is any icc group which is w rigid i e it contains an infinite normal subgroup with the relative property t then any mixing gaussian action x is w superrigid more precisely if y is another free ergodic action such that the crossed product von neumann algebras are isomorphic l x l y then the actions are conjugate we prove a similar statement whenever is a non amenable icc product of two infinite groups

gromov s measure equivalence and rigidity of higher rank lattices in this paper the notion of measure equivalence me of countable groups is studied me was introduced by gromov as a measure theoretic analog of quasi isometries all lattices in the same locally compact group are measure equivalent this is one of the motivations for this notion the main result of this paper is me rigidity of higher rank lattices any countable group which is me to a lattice in a simple lie group g of higher rank is commensurable to a lattice in g

integrable measure equivalence and rigidity of hyperbolic lattices we study rigidity properties of lattices in operatorname isom mathbf h n simeq mathrm so n 1 mathbb r n 3 and of surface groups in operatorname isom mathbf h 2 simeq mathrm sl 2 mathbb r in the context of integrable measure equivalence the results for lattices in operatorname isom mathbf h n n 3 are generalizations of mostow rigidity they include a cocycle version of strong rigidity and an integrable measure equivalence classification despite the lack of mostow rigidity for n 2 we show that cocompact lattices in operatorname isom mathbf h 2 allow a similar integrable measure equivalence classification

w superrigidity for arbitrary actions of central quotients of braid groups for any n geqslant 4 let tilde b n b n z b n be the quotient of the braid group b n through its center we prove that any free ergodic probability measure preserving pmp action tilde b n curvearrowright x mu is virtually hbox w superrigid in the following sense if l infty x rtimes tilde b n cong l infty y rtimes lambda for an arbitrary free ergodic pmp action lambda curvearrowright y nu then the actions tilde b n curvearrowright x lambda curvearrowright y are virtually conjugate moreover we prove that the same holds if tilde b n is replaced with a finite index subgroup of the direct product tilde b n 1 times cdots times tilde b n k for some n 1 ldots n k geqslant 4 the proof uses the dichotomy theorem for normalizers inside crossed products by free groups from popa and vaes 212 141 198 2014 in combination with the oe superrigidity theorem for actions of mapping class groups from kida 131 99 109 2008 similar techniques allow us to prove that if a group gamma is hyperbolic relative to a finite family of proper finitely generated residually finite infinite subgroups then the hbox ii 1 factor l infty x rtimes gamma has a unique cartan subalgebra up to unitary conjugacy for any free ergodic pmp action gamma curvearrowright x mu

non classification of cartan subalgebras for a class of von neumann algebras abstract we study the complexity of the classification problem for cartan subalgebras in von neumann algebras we construct a large family of ii1 factors whose cartan subalgebras up to unitary conjugacy are not classifiable by countable structures providing the first such examples additionally we construct examples of ii1 factors whose cartan subalgebras up to conjugacy by an automorphism are not classifiable by countable structures finally we show directly that the cartan subalgebras of the hyperfinite ii1 factor up to unitary conjugacy are not classifiable by countable structures and deduce that the same holds for any mcduff ii1 factor with at least one cartan subalgebra

an algorithm for shortest paths in bipartite digraphs with concave weight matrices and its applications the traveling salesman problem on an n point convex polygon and the minimum latency tour problem for n points on a straight line are two basic problems in graph theory and have been studied in the past previously it was known that both problems can be solved in o n2 time however whether they can be solved in o n2 time was left open by marcotte and suri siam j comput 20 1991 pp 405 422 and afrati et al informatique theorique appl 20 1986 pp 79 87 respectively in this paper we show that both problems can be solved in o n log n time by reducing them to the following problem given an edge weighted complete bipartite digraph g x y e with x x0 xn and y y0 ym we wish to find the shortest path from x0 to xn in g this new problem requires omega nm time to solve in general but we show that it can be solved in o n m log n time if the weight matrices a and b of g are both concave where for 0 leq i leq n and 0 leq j leq m a i j and b j i are the weights of the edges xi yj and yj xi in g respectively as demonstrated in this paper the new problem is a powerful tool and we believe that it can be used to solve more problems

unique cartan decomposition for ii1 factors arising from arbitrary actions of free groups we prove that for any free ergodic probability measure preserving action mathbb f n curvearrowright x mu of a free group on n generators mathbb f n 2 leq n leq infty the associated group measure space ii1 factor l infty x rtimes mathbb f n has l x as its unique cartan subalgebra up to unitary conjugacy we deduce that group measure space ii1 factors arising from actions of free groups with different number of generators are never isomorphic we actually prove unique cartan decomposition results for ii1 factors arising from arbitrary actions of a much larger family of groups including all free products of amenable groups and their direct products

a maximum b matching problem arising from median location models with applications to the roommates problem we consider maximumb matching problems where the nodes of the graph represent points in a metric space and the weight of an edge is the distance between the respective pair of points we show that if the space is either the rectilinear plane or the metric space induced by a tree network then theb matching problem is the dual of the single median location problem with respect to the given set of points this result does not hold for the euclidean plane however we show that in this case theb matching problem is the dual of a median location problem with respect to the given set of points in some extended metric space we then extend this latter result to any geodesic metric in the plane the above results imply that the respective fractionalb matching problems have integer optimal solutions we use these duality results to prove the nonemptiness of the core of a cooperative game defined on the roommate problem corresponding to the above matching model 1998 the mathematical programming society inc published by elsevier science b v

a particle in cell method for the simulation of plasmas based on an unconditionally stable field solver abstract we propose a new particle in cell pic method for the simulation of plasmas based on a recently developed unconditionally stable solver for the wave equation this method is not subject to a cfl restriction limiting the ratio of the time step size to the spatial step size typical of explicit methods while maintaining computational cost and code complexity comparable to such explicit schemes we describe the implementation in one and two dimensions for both electrostatic and electromagnetic cases and present the results of several standard test problems showing good agreement with theory with time step sizes much larger than allowed by typical cfl restrictions

measure equivalence rigidity and bi exactness of groups we get three types of results on measurable group theory direct product groups of ozawa s class s groups wreath product groups and amalgamated free products we prove measure equivalence factorization results on direct product groups of ozawa s class s groups as consequences monod shalom type orbit equivalence rigidity theorems follow we prove that if two wreath product groups a g b of non amenable exact direct product groups g with amenable bases a b are measure equivalent then g and are measure equivalent we get bass serre rigidity results on amalgamated free products of non amenable exact direct product groups

rigidity for von neumann algebras given by locally compact groups and their crossed products we prove the first rigidity and classification theorems for crossed product von neumann algebras given by actions of non discrete locally compact groups we prove that for arbitrary free probability measure preserving actions of connected simple lie groups of real rank one the crossed product has a unique cartan subalgebra up to unitary conjugacy we then deduce a w strong rigidity theorem for irreducible actions of products of such groups more generally our results hold for products of locally compact groups that are nonamenable weakly amenable and that belong to ozawa s class mathcal s

cocycle superrigidity and bounded cohomology for negatively curved spaces we introduce new techniques to extend superrigidity theory beyond the scope of lie or algebraic groups we construct a cohomological invariant which accounts for and generalizes all known superrigidity results for actions on negatively curved spaces together with a new vanishing result and the machinery of bounded cohomology this enables us to prove a general superrigidity theorem for actions of irreducible lattices on spaces of negative curvature we also prove a cocycle version a la zimmer

classification of type iii bernoulli crossed products abstract crossed products with noncommutative bernoulli actions were introduced by connes as the first examples of full factors of type i i i this article provides a complete classification of the factors p f n f n where f n is the free group and p is an amenable factor with an almost periodic state we show that these factors are completely classified by the rank n of the free group f n and connes s sd invariant we prove similar results for free product groups as well as for classes of generalized bernoulli actions

on the superrigidity of malleable actions with spectral gap some of the most interesting aspects of the dynamics of measure preserving actions of countable groups on probability spaces v rx x are revealed by the study of group measure space von neumann algebras l x x t mvnl and the classification of actions up to orbit equivalence oe i e up to isomorphism of probability spaces carrying the orbits of actions onto each other although one is in von neumann algebras and the other in ergodic theory the two problems are closely related as an oe of actions v rx x a rxy has been shown to implement an algebra isomorphism l x x t l y x a taking l x onto l y and vice versa si dy fm in particular the isomorphism class of l x xi t only depends on the equivalence relation 7 r t gt 1t x g t thus von neumann equivalence vne of group actions requiring isomorphism of their group measure space algebras is weaker than oe since there are exam ples of non oe actions whose associated von neumann algebras are all isomorphic cj1 it is in general strictly weaker on the other hand oe is manifestly weaker than classical conjugacy which for free actions r rx x a rx y requires isomor phism of probability spaces a x p y v satisfying ar a 1 a so in particular r a how much weaker vne and oe can be with respect to conju gacy is best seen in the amenable case where by a celebrated theorem of connes all free ergodic actions of all infinite amenable groups give rise to the same hi factor cl and by dy ow cfw they are undistinguishable under oe as well also any embedding of algebras l x xi t c l y x a with a amenable forces t to be amenable but the non amenable case is extremely complex and for many years progress has been slow mvn2 dy me c2 cw sc even after the discovery of the first rigidity phenomena by connes in von neumann algebras c3 c4 and by zimmer in oe ergodic theory zi z2 this changed dramatically over the last 7 8 years with the advent of a variety of striking rigidity results ful gl g2 mosh h hk p1 p8 see p9 for a survey also sh for a survey on oe rigidity our aim in this paper is to investigate the most extreme such phenomena called strong rigidity which show that for certain classes of source group actions

oe and w superrigidity results for actions by surface braid groups we show that several important normal subgroups of the mapping class group of a surface satisfy the following property any free ergodic probability measure preserving action y x is stablyoe superrigid these include the central quotients of most surface braid groups and most torelli groups and johnson kernels in addition we show that all these groups satisfy the measure equivalence rigidity and we describe all their lattice embeddings using these results in combination with previous results from cik13 we deduce that any free ergodic probabilitymeasure preserving action of almost any surface braid group is stablyw superrigid i e it can be completely reconstructed from its vonneumann algebra

the dimension of the torelli group we prove that the cohomological dimension of the torelli group for a closed connected orientable surface of genus g 2 is equal to 3g 5 this answers a question of mess who proved the lower bound and settled the case of g 2 we also find the cohomological dimension of the johnson kernel the subgroup of the torelli group generated by dehn twists about separating curves to be 2g 3 for g 2 we prove that the top dimensional homology of the torelli group is infinitely generated finally we give a new proof of the theorem of mess that gives a precise description of the torelli group in genus 2 the main tool is a new contractible complex called the complex of minimizing cycles on which the torelli group acts

cocycle superrigidity for translation actions of product groups let g be either a profinite or a connected compact group and be finitely generated dense subgroups assuming that the left translation action of on g is strongly ergodic we prove that any cocycle for the left right translation action of on g with values in a countable group is virtually cohomologous to a group homomorphism moreover we prove that the same holds if g is a not necessarily compact connected simple lie group provided that contains an infinite cyclic subgroup with compact closure we derive several applications to oe and w superrigidity in particular we obtain the first examples of compact actions of f2 f2 which are w superrigid

orbit equivalence rigidity consider a countable group acting ergodically by measure p reserving transformations on a probability space x and let r be the corresponding orbit equivalence relation on x the following rigidity phenomenon is shown there exist group actions such that the equivalence relation r on x determines the group and the action x uniquely up to finite groups the natural action of sln z on the n torus r n z n for n 2 is one of such examples the interpretation of these results in the context of von neumann algebras provides some support to the conjecture of connes on rigidity of group algebras for groups with property t our rigidity results also give examples of countable equivalence relations of type ii1 which cannot be generated mod 0 by a free action of any group this gives a negative answer to a long standing problem of feldman and moore