Given an oriented link in the 3-sphere, the Euler characteristic of its link Floer homology is known to coincide with its multi-variable Alexander polynomial, an invariant only defined up to a sign and powers of the variables. In this paper we remove this ambiguity by proving that this Euler characteristic is equal to the so-called Conway function, the representative of the multi-variable Alexander polynomial introduced by Conway in 1970 and explicitly constructed by Hartley in 1983. This is achieved by creating a model of the Conway function adapted to rectangular diagrams, which is then compared to the Euler characteristic of the combinatorial version of link Floer homology.

We show that Ribet sections are the only obstruction to the validity of the relative Manin–Mumford conjecture for one-dimensional families of semi-abelian surfaces. Applications include special cases of the Zilber–Pink conjecture for curves in a mixed Shimura variety of dimension 4, as well as the study of polynomial Pell equations with non-separable discriminants.

In this paper we prove coincidence results concerning spaces of absolutely summing multilinear mappings between Banach spaces. The nature of these results arises from two distinct approaches: the coincidence of two a priori different classes of summing multilinear mappings, and the summability of all multilinear mappings defined on products of Banach spaces. Optimal generalizations of known results are obtained. We also introduce and explore new techniques in the field: for example, a technique to extend coincidence results for linear, bilinear and even trilinear mappings to general multilinear ones.

We discuss some questions related to the generation of supersoluble groups. First we prove that the number of elements needed to generate a finite supersoluble group G with good probability can be quite a lot larger than the smallest cardinality d(G) of a generating set of G. Indeed, if G is the free prosupersoluble group of rank d ⩾ 2 and dP(G) is the minimum integer k such that the probability of generating G with k elements is positive, then dP(G) = 2d + 1. In contrast to this, if k – d(G) ⩾ 3, then the distribution of the first component in a k-tuple chosen uniformly in the set of all the k-tuples generating G is not too far from the uniform distribution.

Abstract Let G be a linear algebraic group over an algebraically closed field 𝕜 acting rationally on a G-module V with its null-cone. Let δ(G, V) and σ(G, V) denote the minimal number d such that for every and , respectively, there exists a homogeneous invariant f of positive degree at most d such that f(v) ≠ 0. Then δ(G) and σ(G) denote the supremum of these numbers taken over all G-modules V. For positive characteristics, we show that δ(G) = ∞ for any subgroup G of GL2(𝕜) that contains an infinite unipotent group, and σ(G) is finite if and only if G is finite. In characteristic zero, δ(G) = 1 for any group G, and we show that if σ(G) is finite, then G0 is unipotent. Our results also lead to a more elementary proof that βsep(G) is finite if and only if G is finite.

In this paper we study the multiplicity of non-trivial solutions to a class of nonlinear boundary-value problems of Kirchhoff type. We prove existence results when the problem has nonlinearities with subcritical and with critical Caffarelli–Kohn–Nirenberg exponent.

We answer a question of Masser by showing that for the Weierstrass zeta function ζ corresponding to a given lattice Λ, the density of algebraic points of absolute multiplicative height bounded by T and degree bounded by k lying on the graph of ζ, restricted to an appropriate domain, does not exceed c(log T)15 for an effective constant c > 0 depending on k and on Λ. Using different methods, we also give two bounds of the same form for the density of algebraic points of bounded height in a fixed number field lying on the graph of ζ restricted to an appropriate subset of (0, 1). In one case the constant c can be shown not to depend on the choice of lattice; in the other, the exponent can be improved to 12.

For a non-negative and non-trivial real-valued continuous function hΩ × [0, ∞) such that h(x, 0) = 0 for all x ∈ Ω, we study the boundary-value problem

where Ω ⊆ ℝN, N ⩾ 2, is a bounded smooth domain and Δp:= div(|Du|p–2DDu) is the p-Laplacian. This work investigates growth conditions on h(x, t) that would lead to the existence or non-existence of distributional solutions to (BVP). In a major departure from past works on similar problems, in this paper we do not impose any special structure on the inhomogeneous term h(x, t), nor do we require any monotonicity condition on h in the second variable. Furthermore, h(x, t) is allowed to vanish in either of the variables.

We classify all (saturated) fusion systems on bicyclic 2-groups. Here, a bicyclic group is a product of two cyclic subgroups. This extends previous work on fusion systems on metacyclic 2-groups. As an application we prove Olsson's conjecture for all blocks with bicyclic defect groups.

We present a new approach to Davie’s theorem on the uniqueness of solutions to the equation

for almost all Brownian paths. A generalization of this result and a discussion of some closely related problems are given.

We apply the concept of braiding sequences to link polynomials to show polynomial growth bounds on the derivatives of the Jones polynomial evaluated on S1 and of the Brandt–Lickorish–Millett–Ho polynomial evaluated on [–2, 2] on alternating and positive knots of given genus. For positive links, boundedness criteria for the coefficients of the Jones, HOMFLY and Kauffman polynomials are derived. (This is a continuation of the paper ‘Applications of braiding sequences. I’: Commun. Contemp. Math.12(5) (2010), 681–726.)

Let AT(Δ) be the asymptotic universal Teichmüller space, viewed as the space of all asymptotic Teichmüller equivalence classes [[μ]]. We show that if μ is asymptotically extremal in AT(Δ) and hp([[μ]]) < h([[μ]]) for some boundary point p of Δ, then there are infinitely many geodesics joining [[0]] and [[μ]] in AT(Δ). As a corollary, a necessary condition for a complex dilatation to be uniquely extremal in AT(Δ) is given.