We introduce a class of Falconer distance problems, which we call of restricted type, lying between the classical version and its pinned variant. Prototypical restricted distance sets are the diagonal distance sets, k-point configuration sets given by

$$ \begin{align*}\Delta^{\mathrm{diag}}(E)= \{ \,|(x,x,\dots,x)-(y_1,y_2,\dots,y_{k-1})| : x, y_1, \dots,y_{k-1} \in E\, \}\end{align*} $$

$E\subset \mathbb {R}^d$

$k\ge 3$

$\Delta ^{\mathrm{diag}}(E)$

(0.1)

$$ \begin{align} \dim(E)> \begin{cases} \frac{2d+1}3, & k=3, \\ \frac{(k-1)d}k,& k\ge 4. \end{cases} \end{align} $$

$C^\omega $

We show that the Hausdorff dimension of any slice of the graph of the Takagi function is bounded above by the Assouad dimension of the graph minus one, and that the bound is sharp. The result is deduced from a statement on more general self-affine sets, which is of independent interest. We also prove that Marstrand’s slicing theorem on the graph of the Takagi function extends to all slices if and only if the upper pointwise dimension of every projection of the length measure on the x-axis lifted to the graph is at least one.

We study a nonlinear Beltrami equation $f_\theta =\sigma \,|f_r|^m f_r$ in polar coordinates $(r,\theta ),$ which becomes the classical Cauchy–Riemann system under $m=0$ and $\sigma =ir.$ Using the isoperimetric technique, various lower estimates for $|f(z)|/|z|, f(0)=0,$ as $z\to 0,$ are derived under appropriate integral conditions on complex/directional dilatations. The sharpness of the above bounds is illustrated by several examples.

For every $n\geq 2$, Bourgain’s constant $b_n$ is the largest number such that the (upper) Hausdorff dimension of harmonic measure is at most $n-b_n$ for every domain in $\mathbb {R}^n$ on which harmonic measure is defined. Jones and Wolff (1988, Acta Mathematica 161, 131–144) proved that $b_2=1$. When $n\geq 3$, Bourgain (1987, Inventiones Mathematicae 87, 477–483) proved that $b_n>0$ and Wolff (1995, Essays on Fourier analysis in honor of Elias M. Stein (Princeton, NJ, 1991), Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 321–384) produced examples showing $b_n<1$. Refining Bourgain’s original outline, we prove that

$$\begin{align*}b_n\geq c\,n^{-2n(n-1)}/\ln(n),\end{align*}$$

$n\geq 3$

$c>0$

$b_3\geq 1\times 10^{-15}$

$b_4\geq 2\times 10^{-26}$

Marstrand’s theorem states that applying a generic rotation to a planar set A before projecting it orthogonally to the x-axis almost surely gives an image with the maximal possible dimension $\min(1, \dim A)$. We first prove, using the transversality theory of Peres–Schlag locally, that the same result holds when applying a generic complex linear-fractional transformation in $PSL(2,\mathbb{C})$ or a generic real linear-fractional transformation in $PGL(3,\mathbb{R})$. We next show that, under some necessary technical assumptions, transversality locally holds for restricted families of projections corresponding to one-dimensional subgroups of $PSL(2,\mathbb{C})$ or $PGL(3,\mathbb{R})$. Third, we demonstrate, in any dimension, local transversality and resulting projection statements for the families of closest-point projections to totally-geodesic subspaces of hyperbolic and spherical geometries.

Let $\mu$ be a Radon measure on the nth Heisenberg group ${\mathbb{H}}^n$. In this note we prove that if the $(2n+1)$-dimensional (Heisenberg) Riesz transform on ${\mathbb{H}}^n$ is $L^2(\mu)$-bounded, and if $\mu(F)=0$ for all Borel sets with ${\text{dim}}_H(F)\leq 2$, then $\mu$ must have $(2n+1)$-polynomial growth. This is the Heisenberg counterpart of a result of Guy David from [Dav91].

It is a longstanding conjecture that given a subset E of a metric space, if E has unit $\mathscr {H}^{\alpha }\llcorner E$ -density almost everywhere, then E is an $\alpha $ -rectifiable set. We prove this conjecture under the assumption that the ambient metric space is a homogeneous group with a smooth-box norm.

In this paper we prove that the set $\{|x^1-x^2|,\dots,|x^k-x^{k+1}|\,{:}\,x^i\in E\}$ has non-empty interior in $\mathbb{R}^k$ when $E\subset \mathbb{R}^2$ is a Cartesian product of thick Cantor sets $K_1,K_2\subset\mathbb{R}$. We also prove more general results where the distance map $|x-y|$ is replaced by a function $\phi(x,y)$ satisfying mild assumptions on its partial derivatives. In the process, we establish a nonlinear version of the classic Newhouse Gap Lemma, and show that if $K_1,K_2, \phi$ are as above then there exists an open set S so that $\bigcap_{x \in S} \phi(x,K_1\times K_2)$ has non-empty interior.

We investigate the weighted $L_p$ affine surface areas which appear in the recently established $L_p$ Steiner formula of the $L_p$ Brunn–Minkowski theory. We show that they are valuations on the set of convex bodies and prove isoperimetric inequalities for them. We show that they are related to f divergences of the cone measures of the convex body and its polar, namely the Kullback–Leibler divergence and the Rényi divergence.

This thesis is devoted to the exploration of the complexity of some mathematical problems using the framework of computable analysis and (effective) descriptive set theory. We will especially focus on Weihrauch reducibility as a means to compare the uniform computational strength of problems. After a short introduction of the relevant background notions, we investigate the uniform computational content of problems arising from theorems that lie at the higher levels of the reverse mathematics hierarchy.

We first analyze the strength of the open and clopen Ramsey theorems. Since there is not a canonical way to phrase these theorems as multi-valued functions, we identify eight different multi-valued functions (five corresponding to the open Ramsey theorem and three corresponding to the clopen Ramsey theorem) and study their degree from the point of view of Weihrauch, strong Weihrauch, and arithmetic Weihrauch reducibility.

We then discuss some new operators on multi-valued functions and study their algebraic properties and the relations with other previously studied operators on problems. In particular, we study the first-order part and the deterministic part of a problem f, capturing the Weihrauch degree of the strongest multi-valued problem that is reducible to f and that, respectively, has codomain $\mathbb {N}$ or is single-valued.

These notions proved to be extremely useful when exploring the Weihrauch degree of the problem $\mathsf {DS}$ of computing descending sequences in ill-founded linear orders. They allow us to show that $\mathsf {DS}$ , and the Weihrauch equivalent problem $\mathsf {BS}$ of finding bad sequences through non-well quasi-orders, while being very “hard” to solve, are rather weak in terms of uniform computational strength. We then generalize $\mathsf {DS}$ and $\mathsf {BS}$ by considering $\boldsymbol {\Gamma }$ -presented orders, where $\boldsymbol {\Gamma }$ is a Borel pointclass or $\boldsymbol {\Delta }^1_1$ , $\boldsymbol {\Sigma }^1_1$ , $\boldsymbol {\Pi }^1_1$ . We study the obtained $\mathsf {DS}$ -hierarchy and $\mathsf {BS}$ -hierarchy of problems in comparison with the (effective) Baire hierarchy and show that they do not collapse at any finite level.

Finally, we work in the context of geometric measure theory and we focus on the characterization, from the point of view of descriptive set theory, of some conditions involving the notions of Hausdorff/Fourier dimension and Salem sets. We first work in the hyperspace $\mathbf {K}([0,1])$ of compact subsets of $[0,1]$ and show that the closed Salem sets form a $\boldsymbol {\Pi }^0_3$ -complete family. This is done by characterizing the complexity of the family of sets having sufficiently large Hausdorff or Fourier dimension. We also show that the complexity does not change if we increase the dimension of the ambient space and work in $\mathbf {K}([0,1]^d)$ . We also generalize the results by relaxing the compactness of the ambient space and show that the closed Salem sets are still $\boldsymbol {\Pi }^0_3$ -complete when we endow $\mathbf {F}(\mathbb {R}^d)$ with the Fell topology. A similar result holds also for the Vietoris topology.

We conclude by analyzing the same notions from the point of view of effective descriptive set theory and Type-2 Theory of Effectivity, and show that the complexities remain the same also in the lightface case. In particular, we show that the family of all the closed Salem sets is $\Pi ^0_3$ -complete. We furthermore characterize the Weihrauch degree of the functions computing Hausdorff and Fourier dimension of closed sets.

Abstract prepared by Manlio Valenti.

E-mail:manliovalenti@gmail.com

Several results in the existing literature establish Euclidean density theorems of the following strong type. These results claim that every set of positive upper Banach density in the Euclidean space of an appropriate dimension contains isometric copies of all sufficiently large elements of a prescribed family of finite point configurations. So far, all results of this type discussed linear isotropic dilates of a fixed point configuration. In this paper, we initiate the study of analogous density theorems for families of point configurations generated by anisotropic dilations, i.e., families with power-type dependence on a single parameter interpreted as their size. More specifically, we prove nonisotropic power-type generalizations of a result by Bourgain on vertices of a simplex, a result by Lyall and Magyar on vertices of a rectangular box, and a result on distance trees, which is a particular case of the treatise of distance graphs by Lyall and Magyar. Another source of motivation for this paper is providing additional evidence for the versatility of the approach stemming from the work of Cook, Magyar, and Pramanik and its modification used recently by Durcik and the present author. Finally, yet another purpose of this paper is to single out anisotropic multilinear singular integral operators associated with the above combinatorial problems, as they are interesting on their own.

Let $S \subset \mathbb {R}^{n}$ be a smooth compact hypersurface with a strictly positive second fundamental form, $E$ be the Fourier extension operator on $S$, and $X$ be a Lebesgue measurable subset of $\mathbb {R}^{n}$. If $X$ contains a ball of each radius, then the problem of determining the range of exponents $(p,q)$ for which the estimate $\| Ef \|_{L^{q}(X)} \lesssim \| f \|_{L^{p}(S)}$ holds is equivalent to the restriction conjecture. In this paper, we study the estimate under the following assumption on the set $X$: there is a number $0 < \alpha \leq n$ such that $|X \cap B_R| \lesssim R^{\alpha }$ for all balls $B_R$ in $\mathbb {R}^{n}$ of radius $R \geq 1$. On the left-hand side of this estimate, we are integrating the function $|Ef(x)|^{q}$ against the measure $\chi _X \,{\textrm {d}}x$. Our approach consists of replacing the characteristic function $\chi _X$ of $X$ by an appropriate weight function $H$, and studying the resulting estimate in three different regimes: small values of $\alpha$, intermediate values of $\alpha$, and large values of $\alpha$. In the first regime, we establish the estimate by using already available methods. In the second regime, we prove a weighted Hölder-type inequality that holds for general non-negative Lebesgue measurable functions on $\mathbb {R}^{n}$ and combine it with the result from the first regime. In the third regime, we borrow a recent fractal Fourier restriction theorem of Du and Zhang and combine it with the result from the second regime. In the opposite direction, the results of this paper improve on the Du–Zhang theorem in the range $0 < \alpha < n/2$.

In this paper we study various aspects of porosities for conformal fractals. We first explore porosity in the general context of infinite graph directed Markov systems (GDMS), and we show that their limit sets are porous in large (in the sense of category and dimension) subsets. We also provide natural geometric and dynamic conditions under which the limit set of a GDMS is upper porous or mean porous. On the other hand, we prove that if the limit set of a GDMS is not porous, then it is not porous almost everywhere. We also revisit porosity for finite graph directed Markov systems, and we provide checkable criteria which guarantee that limit sets have holes of relative size at every scale in a prescribed direction.

We then narrow our focus to systems associated to complex continued fractions with arbitrary alphabet and we provide a novel characterisation of porosity for their limit sets. Moreover, we introduce the notions of upper density and upper box dimension for subsets of Gaussian integers and we explore their connections to porosity. As applications we show that limit sets of complex continued fractions system whose alphabet is co-finite, or even a co-finite subset of the Gaussian primes, are not porous almost everywhere, while they are uniformly upper porous and mean porous almost everywhere.

We finally turn our attention to complex dynamics and we delve into porosity for Julia sets of meromorphic functions. We show that if the Julia set of a tame meromorphic function is not the whole complex plane then it is porous at a dense set of its points and it is almost everywhere mean porous with respect to natural ergodic measures. On the other hand, if the Julia set is not porous then it is not porous almost everywhere. In particular, if the function is elliptic we show that its Julia set is not porous at a dense set of its points.

We prove that sets with positive upper Banach density in sufficiently large dimensions contain congruent copies of all sufficiently large dilates of three specific higher-dimensional patterns. These patterns are: 2n vertices of a fixed n-dimensional rectangular box, the same vertices extended with n points completing three-term arithmetic progressions, and the same vertices extended with n points completing three-point corners. Our results provide common generalizations of several Euclidean density theorems from the literature.

We prove a Lusin type theorem for a certain class of linear partial differential operators G(D), reducing to [1, Theorem 1] when G(D) is the gradient. Moreover, we describe the structure of the set {G(D)f = F}, under assumptions of non-integrability on F, in terms of lower dimensional rectifiability and superdensity. Applications to Maxwell type system and to multivariable Cauchy–Riemann system are provided.

We obtain a criterion for an analytic subset of a Euclidean space to contain points of differentiability of a typical Lipschitz function: namely, that it cannot be covered by countably many sets, each of which is closed and purely unrectifiable (has a zero-length intersection with every $C^1$ curve). Surprisingly, we establish that any set failing this criterion witnesses the opposite extreme of typical behaviour: in any such coverable set, a typical Lipschitz function is everywhere severely non-differentiable.

We present a new method of proving the Diophantine extremality of various dynamically defined measures, vastly expanding the class of measures known to be extremal. This generalizes and improves the celebrated theorem of Kleinbock and Margulis [Logarithm laws for flows on homogeneous spaces. Invent. Math.138(3) (1999), 451–494] resolving Sprindžuk’s conjecture, as well as its extension by Kleinbock, Lindenstrauss, and Weiss [On fractal measures and Diophantine approximation. Selecta Math.10 (2004), 479–523], hereafter abbreviated KLW. As applications we prove the extremality of all hyperbolic measures of smooth dynamical systems with sufficiently large Hausdorff dimension, and of the Patterson–Sullivan measures of all nonplanar geometrically finite groups. The key technical idea, which has led to a plethora of new applications, is a significant weakening of KLW’s sufficient conditions for extremality. In the first of this series of papers [Extremality and dynamically defined measures, part I: Diophantine properties of quasi-decaying measures. Selecta Math.24(3) (2018), 2165–2206], we introduce and develop a systematic account of two classes of measures, which we call quasi-decaying and weakly quasi-decaying. We prove that weak quasi-decay implies strong extremality in the matrix approximation framework, as well as proving the ‘inherited exponent of irrationality’ version of this theorem. In this paper, the second of the series, we establish sufficient conditions on various classes of conformal dynamical systems for their measures to be quasi-decaying. In particular, we prove the above-mentioned result about Patterson–Sullivan measures, and we show that equilibrium states (including conformal measures) of nonplanar infinite iterated function systems (including those which do not satisfy the open set condition) and rational functions are quasi-decaying.

An abstract system of congruences describes a way of partitioning a space into finitely many pieces satisfying certain congruence relations. Examples of abstract systems of congruences include paradoxical decompositions and $n$-divisibility of actions. We consider the general question of when there are realizations of abstract systems of congruences satisfying various measurability constraints. We completely characterize which abstract systems of congruences can be realized by nonmeager Baire measurable pieces of the sphere under the action of rotations on the $2$-sphere. This answers a question by Wagon. We also construct Borel realizations of abstract systems of congruences for the action of $\mathsf{PSL}_{2}(\mathbb{Z})$ on $\mathsf{P}^{1}(\mathbb{R})$. The combinatorial underpinnings of our proof are certain types of decomposition of Borel graphs into paths. We also use these decompositions to obtain some results about measurable unfriendly colorings.

The classical Alexandrov–Bakelman–Pucci estimate for the Laplacian states

$$\begin{eqnarray}\max _{x\in \unicode[STIX]{x03A9}}|u(x)|\leqslant \max _{x\in \unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x03A9}}|u(x)|+c_{s,n}\text{diam}(\unicode[STIX]{x03A9})^{2-\frac{n}{s}}\Vert \unicode[STIX]{x0394}u\Vert _{L^{s}(\unicode[STIX]{x03A9})},\end{eqnarray}$$

$\unicode[STIX]{x03A9}\subset \mathbb{R}^{n}$

$u\in C^{2}(\unicode[STIX]{x03A9})\cap C(\overline{\unicode[STIX]{x03A9}})$

$s>n/2$

$s=n/2$

$n\geqslant 3$

$\unicode[STIX]{x03A9}\subset \mathbb{R}^{n}$

$$\begin{eqnarray}\max _{x\in \unicode[STIX]{x03A9}}|u(x)|\leqslant \max _{x\in \unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x03A9}}|u(x)|+c_{n}\Vert \unicode[STIX]{x0394}u\Vert _{L^{\frac{n}{2},1}(\unicode[STIX]{x03A9})},\end{eqnarray}$$

$L^{p,q}$

$L^{p}$

$n=2$

$c>0$

$\unicode[STIX]{x03A9}\subset \mathbb{R}^{2}$

$$\begin{eqnarray}\max _{x\in \unicode[STIX]{x03A9}}|u(x)|\leqslant \max _{x\in \unicode[STIX]{x2202}\unicode[STIX]{x03A9}}|u(x)|+c\max _{x\in \unicode[STIX]{x03A9}}\int _{y\in \unicode[STIX]{x03A9}}\max \left\{1,\log \left(\frac{|\unicode[STIX]{x03A9}|}{\Vert x-y\Vert ^{2}}\right)\right\}|\unicode[STIX]{x0394}u(y)|dy.\end{eqnarray}$$

In this paper we develop renewal theorems for point processes with interarrival times ξ(Xn+1Xn…), where (Xn)n∈ℤ is a stochastic process with finite state space Σ and ξ:ΣA→ℝ is a Hölder continuous function on a subset ΣA⊂Σℕ. The theorems developed here unify and generalise the key renewal theorem for discrete measures and Lalley's renewal theorem for counting measures in symbolic dynamics. Moreover, they capture aspects of Markov renewal theory. The new renewal theorems allow for direct applications to problems in fractal and hyperbolic geometry, for instance to the problem of Minkowski measurability of self-conformal sets.