Papers

The signatures of $p$-rough paths form a subgroup of sufficiently high-level truncated tensor algebras, whose inverse limit is a subgroup of the full tensor algebra. For $p \geq 1$, we provide a top-down description of the signature group as the inverse limit of finite-dimensional Carnot–Carathéodory geometries in the $p$-variation setting. We show that every compatible choice of metrics induces a topological tree structure on the inverse-limit group, under which the signature group is not a topological group. This extends the results of Enrico Le Donne and Roland Züst from bounded variation to rough paths. We also characterise the dependence of the inverse-limit groups and their metric completions on the choice of metric, identifying them with the tree-reduced path group of Horatio Boedihardjo, Xiang Geng, Terry Lyons, and Danyu Yang.

For every $n\geq2$, we consider a Gaussian zonoid of revolution $Z_n$ arising from works of Vitale and Mathis. We prove that $Z_n^*$ is also a zonoid and compute the Banach–Mazur distance from $Z_n$ to the Euclidean ball. This distance is independent of the dimension and is approximately $1.10$. Consequently, the supremal Banach–Mazur distance among zonoids whose polars are zonoids does not converge to $1$. The construction also produces a separable real Banach space $X$, not isometric to a Hilbert space, such that both $X$ and $X^*$ embed linearly isometrically into $L_1$.

We prove that the Nieuwland number of the Octahedron is $3\sqrt{2}/4$. Along the way, we provide an elementary proof that Rupert's problem for the Octahedron admits no solution in which the outer projection is a hexagon.

A paper torus is a polyhedral torus embedded in $\mathbb{R}^3$ whose intrinsic metric is locally Euclidean, a torus folded from a flat sheet of paper. Many constructions are known, from dozens of vertices into the thousands, and it is natural to ask how few suffice. Schwartz proved that no paper torus has seven vertices, and built one with eight. Doyle and Schwartz then built paper tori realizing almost every shape of flat torus with eight vertices, their construction missing exactly two rays in moduli space, all the rectangular tori, and the rhombic tori of aspect ratio at least $\sqrt3$. These rays end at the two most symmetric flat tori, the square torus and the hexagonal torus. We build an eight-vertex paper torus realizing each of them. We also prove that eight-vertex paper tori realize every shape near these two, since the flat configurations around both form a smooth seventeen dimensional manifold on which the modulus is a submersion.

Given a centrally symmetric convex body, consider the zero set of the Fourier transform of its characteristic function. We study how large the distance from this set to the origin can be when the volume of the body is fixed. A 2009 conjecture of Benguria, Levitin, and Parnovski asserts that the maximum is attained by a Euclidean ball. We disprove it in all dimensions greater than one. In the plane, every regular centrally symmetric polygon with at least twelve sides outperforms the disk, albeit by a tiny margin, and the regular dodecagon is best among them. In dimensions three and higher, no maximiser exists.

We study lower and upper box dimension prints for bounded subsets of \(\mathbb R^n\), defined by weighted covering numbers for independently oriented rectangular boxes with prescribed ordered side-length bounds. The limits range over all eccentricities, including unbounded aspect ratios. For every non-empty bounded set, we identify the closure of the lower print with the intersection of the half-spaces determined by its lower eccentricity profile, without any uniformity assumption. The profile equals the support function of this closure if and only if it is subadditive. A planar product example has distinct lower and upper profiles on every ray and an explicitly computable lower-print closure. We also prove that both prints are invariant under nonsingular projective transformations on compact sets avoiding the pole hyperplane. Uniform anisotropic covering estimates determine both prints, including their boundary points, for non-degenerate curves of type \((1,\ldots,n)\), their Ahlfors regular parameter subsets, and higher-dimensional spheres. Finally, local covering-count and product-measure criteria identify the lower box print with the Hausdorff dimension print, while a reciprocal-sequence example shows that this inclusion can be strict.

We prove that the intrinsic jump set of every locally integrable function on an equiregular Carnot-Carathéodory space is intrinsically countably rectifiable. A key new ingredient is a local scalar Whitney extension theorem for intrinsic $C^1$ functions.

Motivated by Wasserstein measures of dependence, we study the largest possible 2-Wasserstein distance between a joint distribution and the product of its prescribed marginals. For two uniform marginals, Catalano and Lavenant conjectured that the monotone and antimonotone couplings maximize the distance from the independent coupling. We prove the Gaussian analogue for an arbitrary number $n\geq 2$ of one-dimensional standard Gaussian marginals. More generally, for every probability measure $\mu$ on $\mathbb R$ with finite second moment, we characterize the laws on $\mathbb{R}^n$ with all marginals equal to $\mu$ that are farthest from the $n$-dimensional standard Gaussian.

A completion theory for hyperbolic distance data is developed at the interface of matrix analysis, graph theory, and hyperbolic geometry. Krein's characterization of the metric space embeddability in Lobachevsky space leads to a natural anchoring procedure that transforms the indefinite data into a positive semidefinite kernel. In analogy with positive semidefinite and Euclidean distance matrix completion, chordality of the specification graph is shown to be the necessary and sufficient condition for local Lorentz-Gram data to admit global completion. Existence is complemented by explicit constructions. For trees, we obtain geodesic-rectification and product-distance completions; for chordal graphs, the latter extends to matrix-valued transfers along clique-trees. The resulting canonical completion is characterized by sparsity of its inverse and by a maximum-absolute-determinant principle. Its metric distortion exhibits a sharp dichotomy governed by clique separator size. Applications to exact recovery from sparse hyperbolic measurements and to hierarchical and phylogenetic data are developed.

The Barker–Larman problem asks if a convex body $K \subseteq \mathbb R^n$ containing the Euclidean ball $\mathbb B_n$, such that all the sections of $K$ by hyperplanes tangent to $\mathbb B_n$ have constant $(n-1)$-dimensional volume, must necessarily be a Euclidean ball. In this paper we show a result pointing to a negative answer in dimension $4$. Taking $\lambda_0 = 4 \sqrt{3}\pi$ and any $N \in \mathbb N$, we obtain the existence of a family of convex bodies $K_{\lambda,N}$ with $\lambda \in (\lambda_0-r_N, \lambda_0 + r_N)$, such that the sections of $K_{\lambda,N}$ by hyperplanes tangent to the Euclidean ball, have area within $c |\lambda - \lambda_0|^{N+1}$ of $\lambda$, while the difference between outradius and inradius of $K_{\lambda,N}$ is larger than $C |\lambda - \lambda_0|$. The bodies $K_{\lambda,N}$ are constructed via radial functions as \[\rho_{K_{\lambda,N}}(t) = \cos\left( \sum_{n=0}^N \frac{(\lambda-\lambda_0)^n}{n!} \varphi_n(t) \right)^{-1},\] where $t \in [0,2\pi), \lambda \in \mathbb R$ and $\varphi_n$ are trigonometric polynomials that can be computed explicitly. The convergence of the inner power series when $N \to \infty$ (which is left open) would imply a negative answer to the Barker–Larman problem in dimension $4$. As an example we obtain a convex body whose outradius and inradius differ by more than $0.176$, and the area of the sections oscillate by less than $3 \times 10^{-7}$.

We prove that the curvature equation $\sum_{j=1}^n \alpha_j E_j(\tau_{\mathcal{M}})=\sum_{j=1}^n \alpha_j E_j(\tau_{\mathcal{N}})$ yields uniqueness up to translation for any two closed $C^2_+$ hypersurfaces $\mathcal{M}, \mathcal{N}\hookrightarrow\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ whenever $(\alpha_1,\ldots,\alpha_n)\in\mathbb{R}_{\geq 0}^n\setminus\{0\}$ is log-concave and has no internal zeros. This gives an affirmative answer to a uniqueness question posed by Firey in the $C^2_+$ class.

We determine the sharp measure contraction exponents of two families of Grushin-type metric measure spaces. The radial Grushin space $\mathbb{G}^{n+m}$ is $\mathbb{R}^{n}\times\mathbb{R}^{m}$, equipped with Lebesgue measure and generated by $X_i=\partial_{x_i}$ and $Y_j=|x|\partial_{y_j}$, for $1\leq i\leq n$ and $1\leq j\leq m$. We prove that $\mathbb{G}^{n+m}$ satisfies $\operatorname{MCP}(K,N)$ if and only if $N\geq n+4m$ and $K\leq 0$. We also show that, for $\alpha\geq1$, the $\alpha$-Grushin plane generated by $X=\partial_x$ and $Y_\alpha=|x|^\alpha\partial_y$ satisfies $\operatorname{MCP}(K,N)$ if and only if $K\leq0$ and $N\geq N_\alpha$, where \[ N_\alpha := 1+\max_{L>1} \frac{(2\alpha+1)L}{(L-1)^{2\alpha+1}+1}. \] This resolves the conjecture posed in arXiv:2010.16350 and, for integer $\alpha\geq2$, provides the first examples of real-analytic sub-Riemannian structures with noninteger curvature exponent. Both results recover the known curvature exponent $5$ of the classical Grushin plane, corresponding respectively to $n=m=1$ and $\alpha=1$.

The first aim of this article is to extend the notion of the Gromov product to the class of partial metric spaces. A relation between $\delta$-hyperbolicity of a partial metric space and $\delta$-hyperbolicity of metric spaces endowed with the metrics defined via that partial metric is also established. The second one is to analyze the Gromov product in the wide class of metric spaces in which metrics are defined via Chebyshev sets. Midpoint mappings in this class of spaces will be also examined.

We study the geodesic convex hull of a stationary Poisson point process restricted to a horoball in $d$-dimensional hyperbolic space. The resulting random set is an unbounded hyperbolic polyhedron with a distinguished ideal direction. Projecting its boundary facets to the bounding horosphere yields a stationary Euclidean tessellation of $\mathbb{R}^{d-1}$, which we identify as a dual Poisson–Laguerre tessellation with an explicit height density. We derive an exact formula for its cell intensity and, in the critical regime where the intensity of the Poisson point process is matched with the height of the horoball, we prove local convergence of the projected tessellation to the classical Poisson–Delaunay tessellation in $\mathbb{R}^{d-1}$. As consequences, the typical cell converges in distribution and the intensities of all $k$-dimensional faces converge to their Poisson–Delaunay counterparts. We also study a localised volume functional of the hyperbolic convex hull, determine its limiting expectation in the same regime, and use an Efron-type identity to obtain a second-order asymptotic expansion for the vertex intensity. In addition, we derive an exact formula for the expected localised surface area and determine its critical asymptotics. In dimensions $d\ge3$ the expected unnormalised local surface area converges to a finite limit, whereas in dimension $d=2$ it exhibits logarithmic growth.

We show that every area-preserving Lipschitz map between metric surfaces distorts the length of almost every curve by at most a multiplicative factor, answering a question posed by the first author and Ntalampekos. We give two different proofs. The first is entirely intrinsic and extends to higher dimensions under additional assumptions. The second relies on non-smooth uniformization theory and yields the conclusion that the family of curves intersecting the purely 2-unrectifiable part of a metric surface in a set of positive length is exceptional.

Makeev [2] stated that every finite Borel measure in $\mathbb R^d$ assigning zero mass to hyperplanes can be cut by $d$ mutually orthogonal hyperplanes so that every pair divides the measure into four equal parts, and outlined a proof strategy, but the key steps were left incomplete. We give a direct and elementary proof. The main ingredient is a Borsuk–Ulam theorem for $O(k)$: every $B_k$-equivariant map from $O(k)$ to a natural representation of the hyperoctahedral group $B_k$ has a zero. An explicit model map has one free orbit of zeros, consisting of the signed eigenbases of a diagonal operator with simple spectrum. A derivative computation and mod-$2$ equivariant degree complete the proof. This is a self-contained proof of a special case of the general Stiefel-manifold theorem in [5].

What is the Gromov–Hausdorff distance between Euclidean unit balls of different dimensions, denoted by $d_\gh(B^m,B^n)$, for $m>n$? Note that the lower bound coming from the stability of persistent homology is zero, since all balls possess identical (trivial) persistent homology. To establish non-trivial lower bounds, we exploit the Borsuk–Ulam theorem. For any $m > n \ge 1$, we prove that $d_\gh(B^m,B^n)\ge \tfrac{1}{1+\alpha_n} > \frac{1}{2}$, where we determine $\alpha_n$ explicitly. We also prove that $d_\gh(B^m,B^n)\to 1$ as $m\to \infty$ and that $d_\gh(B^m,B^n)<1$ for all finite $m>n\geq 1$.

We prove that the space of isometry classes of nonempty compact metric spaces, equipped with the Gromov–Hausdorff distance, is homeomorphic to the real separable infinite-dimensional Hilbert space. We construct a continuous assignment of full-support probability measures that is equivariant under isometries and finite-dimensional local approximations that control all pairwise distances. These approximations yield the absolute retract property for all metrizable spaces. We also prove that any countable family of continuous maps from compact metrizable spaces can be approximated, with respect to a prescribed open cover, by maps whose images form a discrete family.

Kimberling's Problem 10 asks for a simple closed curve of prescribed length $L$ (in particular, $L=4\pi$) on the unit sphere minimizing the mean geodesic distance $\mathcal{J}$ from a point of the sphere to the curve. For a positive integer $n$, put $\vartheta_{n}=\pi/(2n)$ and $L_{n}=2\pi/\sin\vartheta_{n}$. We show that the minimum of $\mathcal{J}$ over rectifiable simple closed curves of length at most $L_{n}$ equals $\vartheta_{n}-\tan(\vartheta_{n}/2)$, that it is attained only by curves of length exactly $L_{n}$, and that the sphere-filling ropes $\beta^{n,k}$ of Gerlach and von der Mosel attain it. Kimberling's case is $n=3$: at $L=4\pi$ the minimum is $\pi/6+\sqrt{3}-2=0.255649\ldots$, attained by an explicit six-arc curve and by its mirror image. For $L\le2\pi$ we determine $J(L)$, the infimum of $\mathcal{J}$ over curves of length $L$, exactly: it equals $\pi/2-L/(2\pi)$, attained precisely by the circles of length $L$. At the lengths $L_{n}$ we do not classify all minimizers, but show that every one of them bisects the sphere into two disks of area $2\pi$ and inradius $\vartheta_{n}$ whose inward collars have the largest possible area at every depth. The great circle is the only minimizer for $n=1$, and the $\beta^{n,k}$ are, up to congruence, the only ones of thickness at least $\sin\vartheta_{n}$. For arbitrary $L$ the function $J$ is nonincreasing, and together with the above this brackets it between two explicit values.

Using a convex pentagonal monotile belonging to the Type 5 family, we investigate the relationships among the hat tile, turtle tile, and Tile$(1, 1)$. By applying Sugimoto's Perspective and Amfirifma's Perspective, we obtain four types of concave polygons, AH-tile, BH-tile, AT-tile, and BT-tile, each having Heesch number 1 under the conditions considered. We show that these polygons correspond to clusters used to generate the non-periodic tilings $\mathscr{T}_h$ and $\mathscr{T}_s$. We further discuss the possibility that tile sets consisting of pairs selected from these polygons may correspond to $\textit{ASPmr}\{\text{A-tile}, \text{B-tile}\}$.

We prove that every convex body $K\subset\mathbb{R}^3$ of constant width $w>0$ satisfies \[ \operatorname{Vol}(K)\ge \frac{1651}{4000}w^3=0.41275\,w^3. \] This improves the certified lower bound $0.411040473721188\ldots\,w^3$ announced by Hyra and the earlier spectral bound $4\pi w^3/33$ of Nishioka. The main new ingredient is a contact-tetrahedron estimate near equality in Jung's circumradius inequality. Four balanced contacts of a minimum circumscribed ball form a near-regular tetrahedron; constant width then forces, beyond the tetrahedron itself, spherical regions over its faces, spindle sectors along its edges, and additional face-edge sectors. These regions can be selected with pairwise disjoint interiors and quantified by the total squared-edge deficit. A sharp convexity argument relates that deficit to the circumradius, and a symmetrization argument controls the four face contributions with only quadratic loss. This gives the analytic bound $\operatorname{Vol}(K)>0.41275318$ near the Jung endpoint. For the complementary circumradius range we use Hyra's radial transport/tangent-majorant mechanism together with closed-form contact and antipodal profiles. The antipodal contribution has an elementary primitive. For the contact contribution, a second-order concavity estimate converts the angular Jacobian into an explicit rational lower density; that density is monotone in the circumradius. The whole intermediate range therefore reduces to a single endpoint calculation, giving $\operatorname{Vol}(K)>0.41275168$. For smaller circumradius the tangent-majorant inequality with its nonnegative gap discarded already gives $\operatorname{Vol}(K)>0.41308109$. The proof is entirely analytic and requires no computer-assisted certificate.

We study sample covariance matrices $K = \frac{1}{N} \sum_{i=1}^N \mathbf{x}_i \mathbf{x}_i^* \in \mathbb{R}^{n \times n}$ in the proportional regime $n \asymp N$. The columns $ \mathbf{x}_1, \ldots, \mathbf{x}_N \in \mathbb{R}^n$ are independent and centered, with common covariance $\mathbb{E} \mathbf{x}_i \mathbf{x}_i^* = \Sigma$, but may otherwise have strongly and nonlinearly dependent coordinates. Assuming only that quadratic forms of the columns concentrate uniformly at the optimal rate $| \mathbf{x}_i^* A \mathbf{x}_i - \mathrm{Tr} \Sigma A | \prec \| A \|_F$, together with polynomial norm moments and a standard nondegeneracy condition on $\Sigma$, we prove the optimal anisotropic local law: on regular spectral domains, uniformly down to spectral scales $\eta:= \mathrm{Im}\, z \geq N^{-1 + \tau}$, \[ \big| \langle \mathbf{u} , \big( (K-z)^{-1} - (-zI_n-z\widetilde m_0(z)\Sigma \big)^{-1} \big) \mathbf{v} \> \big| \prec \sqrt{\frac{\mathrm{Im}\, \widetilde m_0 (z)}{N\eta}} + \frac{1}{N\eta} \] for all deterministic unit vectors $ \mathbf{u}, \mathbf{v} \in \mathbb{C}^n$, where $\widetilde m_0(z)$ is the Stieltjes transform of the deformed Marchenko-Pastur law. This removes the higher-cumulant tensor assumption of Fan, Ma, Paquette, and Wang (2026), thereby answering the question raised in their work. The result applies, among other examples, to every centered log-concave column distribution with bounded, nondegenerate covariance, nonlinear tilts of Gaussian vectors, deep random features, and a high-temperature spherical 4-spin model for which the cumulant assumption is known to fail.

We classify the monotone $\SOn d$-invariant valuations, $d\ge2$, on the space of all closed convex cones. They are precisely the linear combinations of the conic intrinsic volumes with nondecreasing coefficients, or equivalently, the nonnegative linear combinations of intrinsic volume tails, up to an additive constant. On nonzero pointed cones we obtain the corresponding characterisation by Grassmann angles, settling a conjecture of McMullen. Every such valuation is automatically continuous in the spherical Hausdorff topology and is $\On d$-invariant. Our proof builds on the signed simplex and averaging arguments of Wang and Wu, but does not rely on the continuous classification theorem.

We give a self-contained exposition of metric differentiability for Lipschitz mappings from sets in Euclidean spaces into arbitrary metric spaces, together with the corresponding area and co-area formulas. The novelty is a new metric implicit function theorem for mappings into metric spaces, which is then used to give a direct and geometric proof of the co-area formula for Lipschitz mappings into metric spaces.

For $n\ge 3$ and $c\in(0,1)$, let $\mathcal{GT}(n,c)$ denote the class of geodesic metric trees of valence at most $n$ whose branch points are uniformly relatively separated with constant $c$. We prove that $\mathcal{GT}(n,c)$ has no bi-Lipschitz universal element. More precisely, we construct a family $(T_a)_{a\in[1/4,1/3]}\subset\mathcal{GT}(n,c)$ such that, for every $n_M\geq 3, c_M\in(0,1)$ and every $M\in\mathcal{GT}(n_M, c_M)$, there are at most countably many parameters $a$ for which $T_a$ admits a bi-Lipschitz embedding into $M$, whereas each $T_a$ admits a bi-Lipschitz embedding into $\mathbb R^2$. Thus the obstruction is neither dimensional nor caused by a failure of planar embeddability. This gives a negative answer to a question of Chrontsios-Garitsis, Ioannidis, and Vellis~\cite[Question~1.11]{CGIV2024}. Furthermore, we show a complementary positive result for ultrametric spaces: every bounded ultrametric space $X$ admits a bi-Lipschitz embedding into every complete metric space $Y$ satisfying $\dim_A X<\dim_{LA} Y$ where $\dim_A X$ and $\dim_{LA} X$ are Assouad and lower Assouad dimensions, respectively.

Covariance-sensitive analyses of Gaussian annealing for sampling from a convex body require controlling how much covariance can grow under a radial Gaussian tilt. For an isotropic convex body $K\subseteq\mathbb{R}^n$, let $\mu_{K,t} (\mathrm{d} x) \propto e^{-t\| x \| ^2} \mathbb{1}_K(x)\,\mathrm{d} x$, and let $Q_n$ be the supremum of $\|\operatorname{Cov}(\mu_{K,t})\|_{\mathrm{op}}$ over all such $K$ and all $t>0$. We prove the sharp bound $Q_n=\Theta(n^{2/5})$, closing the gap between the known $\Omega(n^{1/3})$ lower bound and the $O(\sqrt{n\log(en)})$ upper bound. The upper bound applies not only to uniform measures on convex bodies but to every compactly supported isotropic logconcave probability measure. It combines a dimension-free variance bound for quadratic forms with a Rényi comparison at a nearby time, projected moment estimates, and relative-entropy control along the Gaussian-tilt path. For the matching lower bound, we construct an explicit unconditional convex body whose axial coordinate is coupled to the transverse quadratic energy. Moderate-deviation estimates show that an appropriate tilt creates directional variance $\Omega(n^{2/5})$.

We determine the optimal order of the scaling parameter in the metric cotype $2$ inequality for complete Alexandrov spaces of nonnegative curvature. It grows linearly with the dimension $n$ of the discrete torus. This answers Question 17 of Eskenazis, Mendel, and Naor. In their sign-vector normalization on $\bigl(\mathbb{Z}/(2m\mathbb{Z})\bigr)^n$, the square of the optimal metric cotype $2$ constant for this class lies between $\max\{1,n/m\}$ and $e\lceil n/m\rceil$ for every dyadic $m\geq 2$. The upper bound follows from a dyadic Bernoulli-thinning argument using only the Lang–Schroeder–Sturm inequality. Snowflake universality of the fixed Wasserstein space $\mathcal{P}_2(\mathbb{R}^3)$ gives the $n/m$ lower bound.

For every $1\leq p<\infty$ and even integer $m\geq4$, we determine the optimal order of the $p$-moment torus inequality for $L_1$: it is $m^p n^{(1-p/2)_+}+n$, with comparison constants independent of $p,m,n$ after taking $p$-th roots. Consequently, for every $2\leq q<\infty$ and $1\leq p\leq q$, the corresponding metric cotype inequality holds at the sharp scale $m=O(n^{1/q})$. In particular, the quadratic inequality holds with $m=O(\sqrt{n})$, answering the $L_1$ sharp metric cotype question of Mendel and Naor. The proof combines finite cut representations with a nonlinear smoothing estimate and an exact ternary rounding identity.

We consider two higher-order generalizations of the Godbersen conjecture for mixed volumes of convex bodies, which were first proposed by Schneider in 2000. First, we establish the conjectures in several special cases, in particular in low dimensions. Second, we prove that certain consequences of the conjectures hold. More precisely, we define a higher-order version of the unbalanced difference body and prove related weighted inequalities, generalizing previous results of Artstein-Avidan and Putterman. Finally, we introduce higher-order analogs of unbalanced joins of convex bodies considered by Artstein-Avidan, Einhorn, Florentin, and Ostrover, prove the corresponding volume bounds, and propose conjectures that interpolate between the higher-order Godbersen conjectures and a conjecture due to Fáry and Rédei.

This short note gives a very short unified proof of both Dar's conjecture and the log-Brunn–Minkowski inequality in the plane. A planar $L_p$-Brunn-Minkowski inequality for $p\in [-\infty,0]$ is established and gives the two key inequalities at $p=0$ and $p=-\infty$. Motivated by this new proof, the author proposes a related conjecture in $\tr^3$, to attack the two conjectures in higher dimensions.