Explicit concave fillings of contact three-manifolds

In this paper we give explicit, handle-by-handle constructions of concave symplectic fillings of all closed, oriented contact 3-manifolds. These constructions combine recent results of Giroux relating contact structures and open book decompositions of 3-manifolds, earlier results of the author on attaching 4-dimensional symplectic 2-handles along transverse links, and some tricks with mapping class groups of compact surfaces with non-empty boundary.Comment: 15 pages. Accepted for publication in the Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. Current version is identical to final version submitted to the journal, differs from original version only in some notation and minor editorial change

Representing Symmetric Rank Two Updates

Various quasi-Newton methods periodically add a symmetric "correction" matrix of rank at most 2 to a matrix approximating some quantity A of interest (such as the Hessian of an objective function). In this paper we examine several ways to express a symmetric rank 2 matrix [delta] as the sum of rank 1 matrices. We show that it is easy to compute rank 1 matrices [delta1] and [delta2] such that [delta] = [delta1] + [delta2] and [the norm of delta1]+ [the norm of delta2] is minimized, where ||.|| is any inner product norm. Such a representation recommends itself for use in those computer programs that maintain A explicitly, since it should reduce cancellation errors and/or improve efficiency over other representations. In the common case where [delta] is indefinite, a choice of the form [delta1] = [delta2 to the power of T] = [xy to the power of T] appears best. This case occurs for rank 2 quasi- Newton updates [delta] exactly when [delta] may be obtained by symmetrizing some rank 1 update; such popular updates as the DFP, BFGS, PSB, and Davidon's new optimally conditioned update fall into this category.

Reconstructing 4-manifolds from Morse 2-functions

Given a Morse 2-function $f: X^4 \to S^2$, we give minimal conditions on the fold curves and fibers so that $X^4$ and $f$ can be reconstructed from a certain combinatorial diagram attached to $S^2$. Additional remarks are made in other dimensions.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures. Replaced because the main theorem in the original is false. The theorem has been corrected and counterexamples to the original statement are give

Constructing symplectic forms on 4-manifolds which vanish on circles

Given a smooth, closed, oriented 4-manifold X and alpha in H_2(X,Z) such that alpha.alpha > 0, a closed 2-form w is constructed, Poincare dual to alpha, which is symplectic on the complement of a finite set of unknotted circles. The number of circles, counted with sign, is given by d = (c_1(s)^2 -3sigma(X) -2chi(X))/4, where s is a certain spin^C structure naturally associated to w.Comment: Published by Geometry and Topology at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/gt/GTVol8/paper20.abs.htm

Solving Systems of Non-Linear Equations by Broyden's Method with Projected Updates

We introduce a modification of Broyden's method for finding a zero of n nonlinear equations in n unknowns when analytic derivatives are not available. The method retains the local Q-superlinear convergence of Broyden's method and has the additional property that if any or all of the equations are linear, it locates a zero of these equations in n+1 or fewer iterations. Limited computational experience suggests that our modification often improves upon Eroyden's method.