Periodic Orbits of Hamiltonian Systems Linear and Hyperbolic at Infinity

We consider Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms of the Euclidean space, generated by compactly supported time-dependent perturbations of hyperbolic quadratic forms. We prove that, under some natural assumptions, such a diffeomorphism must have simple periodic orbits of arbitrarily large period when it has fixed points which are not necessary from a homological perspective.Comment: 21 pages; substantially revised, final version; to appear in Pacific Journal of Mathematic

Perfect Reeb flows and action-index relations

We study non-degenerate Reeb flows arising from perfect contact forms, i.e., the forms with vanishing contact homology differential. In particular, we obtain upper bounds on the number of simple closed Reeb orbits for such forms on a variety of contact manifolds and certain action-index resonance relations for the standard contact sphere. Using these results, we reprove a theorem due to Bourgeois, Cieliebak and Ekholm characterizing perfect Reeb flows on the standard contact three-sphere as non-degenerate Reeb flows with exactly two simple closed orbits.Comment: 15 page

Nonconcentration of return times

We show that the distribution of the first return time $\tau$ to the origin, v, of a simple random walk on an infinite recurrent graph is heavy tailed and nonconcentrated. More precisely, if $d_v$ is the degree of v, then for any $t\geq1$ we have $$\mathbf{P}_v(\tau\ge t)\ge\frac{c}{d_v\sqrt{t}}$$ and $$\mathbf{P}_v(\tau=t\mid\tau\geq t)\leq\frac{C\log(d_vt)}{t}$$ for some universal constants $c>0$ and $C<\infty$. The first bound is attained for all t when the underlying graph is $\mathbb{Z}$, and as for the second bound, we construct an example of a recurrent graph G for which it is attained for infinitely many t's. Furthermore, we show that in the comb product of that graph G with $\mathbb{Z}$, two independent random walks collide infinitely many times almost surely. This answers negatively a question of Krishnapur and Peres [Electron. Commun. Probab. 9 (2004) 72-81] who asked whether every comb product of two infinite recurrent graphs has the finite collision property.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/12-AOP785 the Annals of Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aop/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Poisson Thickening

Let X be a Poisson point process of intensity lambda on the real line. A thickening of it is a (deterministic) measurable function f such that the union of X and f(X) is a Poisson point process of intensity lambda' where lambda'>lambda. An equivariant thickening is a thickening which commutes with all shifts of the line. We show that a thickening exists but an equivariant thickening does not. We prove similar results for thickenings which commute only with integer shifts and in the discrete and multi-dimensional settings. This answers 3 questions of Holroyd, Lyons and Soo. We briefly consider also a much more general setup in which we ask for the existence of a deterministic coupling satisfying a relation between two probability measures. We present a conjectured sufficient condition for the existence of such couplings.Comment: Added conjecture about when a deterministic coupling satisfying a relation exists. Made some minor revisions. To appear in Israel Journal of Mathematics. 16 page