We consider the problem of strong approximations of the solution of stochastic differential equations of Itô form with a constant lag in the argument. We indicate the nature of the equations of interest, and give a convergence proof in full detail for explicit one-step methods. We provide some illustrative numerical examples, using the Euler–Maruyama scheme.

The author has determined, for all simple simply connected reductive linear algebraic groups defined over a finite field, all the irreducible representations in their defining characteristic of degree below some bound. These also give the small degree projective representations in defining characteristic for the corresponding finite simple groups. For large rank l, this bound is proportional to l3, and for rank less than or equal to 11 much higher. The small rank cases are based on extensive computer calculations.

Positive results are proved here about the ability of numerical simulations to reproduce the exponential mean-square stability of stochastic differential equations (SDEs). The first set of results applies under finite-time convergence conditions on the numerical method. Under these conditions, the exponential mean-square stability of the SDE and that of the method (for sufficiently small step sizes) are shown to be equivalent, and the corresponding second-moment Lyapunov exponent bounds can be taken to be arbitrarily close. The required finite-time convergence conditions hold for the class of stochastic theta methods on globally Lipschitz problems. It is then shown that exponential mean-square stability for non-globally Lipschitz SDEs is not inherited, in general, by numerical methods. However, for a class of SDEs that satisfy a one-sided Lipschitz condition, positive results are obtained for two implicit methods. These results highlight the fact that for long-time simulation on nonlinear SDEs, the choice of numerical method can be crucial.

We describe a mechanically verified proof of correctness of the floating point multiplication, division, and square root instructions of the AMD-K7 microprocessor. The instructions are implemented in hardware and represented here by register-transfer level specifications, the primitives of which are logical operations on bit vectors. On the other hand, the statements of correctness, derived from IEEE Standard 754, are arithmetic in nature and considerably more abstract. Therefore, we begin by developing a theory of bit vectors and their role in floating point representations and rounding. We then present the hardware model and a rigorous proof of its correctness. All of our definitions, lemmas and theorems have been formally encoded in the ACL2 logic, and every step in the proof has been mechanically checked with the ACL2 prover.

The use of diagrams in mathematics has traditionally been restricted to guiding intuition and communication. With rare exceptions such as Peirce's alpha and beta systems, purely diagrammatic formal reasoning has not been in the mathematician's or logician's toolkit. This paper develops a purely diagrammatic reasoning system of “spider diagrams” that builds on Euler, Venn and Peirce diagrams. The system is known to be expressively equivalent to first-order monadic logic with equality. Two levels of diagrammatic syntax have been developed: an ‘abstract’ syntax that captures the structure of diagrams, and a ‘concrete’ syntax that captures topological properties of drawn diagrams. A number of simple diagrammatic transformation rules are given, and the resulting reasoning system is shown to be sound and complete.

Let $\mathcal{O}$ be a maximal order in a definite quaternion algebra over $\mathbb{Q}$ of prime discriminant $p$, and $\ell $ a small prime. We describe a probabilistic algorithm which, for a given left $\mathcal{O}$-ideal, computes a representative in its left ideal class of $\ell $-power norm. In practice the algorithm is efficient and, subject to heuristics on expected distributions of primes, runs in expected polynomial time. This solves the underlying problem for a quaternion analog of the Charles–Goren–Lauter hash function, and has security implications for the original CGL construction in terms of supersingular elliptic curves.

Let $\mathbf{f}$ and $\mathbf{g}$ be polynomials of a bounded Euclidean norm in the ring $\mathbb{Z}[X]/\langle X^{n}+1\rangle$. Given the polynomial $[\mathbf{f}/\mathbf{g}]_{q}\in \mathbb{Z}_{q}[X]/\langle X^{n}+1\rangle$, the NTRU problem is to find $\mathbf{a},\mathbf{b}\in \mathbb{Z}[X]/\langle X^{n}+1\rangle$ with a small Euclidean norm such that $[\mathbf{a}/\mathbf{b}]_{q}=[\mathbf{f}/\mathbf{g}]_{q}$. We propose an algorithm to solve the NTRU problem, which runs in $2^{O(\log ^{2}\unicode[STIX]{x1D706})}$ time when $\Vert \mathbf{g}\Vert ,\Vert \mathbf{f}\Vert$, and $\Vert \mathbf{g}^{-1}\Vert$ are within some range. The main technique of our algorithm is the reduction of a problem on a field to one on a subfield. The GGH scheme, the first candidate of an (approximate) multilinear map, was recently found to be insecure by the Hu–Jia attack using low-level encodings of zero, but no polynomial-time attack was known without them. In the GGH scheme without low-level encodings of zero, our algorithm can be directly applied to attack this scheme if we have some top-level encodings of zero and a known pair of plaintext and ciphertext. Using our algorithm, we can construct a level-$0$ encoding of zero and utilize it to attack a security ground of this scheme in the quasi-polynomial time of its security parameter using the parameters suggested by Garg, Gentry and Halevi [‘Candidate multilinear maps from ideal lattices’, Advances in cryptology — EUROCRYPT 2013 (Springer, 2013) 1–17].

The authors of this paper study approximation methods for stochastic differential equations, and point out a simple relation between the order of convergence in the pth mean and the order of convergence in the pathwise sense: Convergence in the pth mean of order α for all p ≥ 1 implies pathwise convergence of order α – ε for arbitrary ε > 0. The authors then apply this result to several one-step and multi-step approximation schemes for stochastic differential equations and stochastic delay differential equations. In addition, they give some numerical examples.

In this paper, the strong mean square convergence theory is established for the numerical solutions of stochastic functional differential equations (SFDEs) under the local Lipschitz condition and the linear growth condition. These two conditions are generally imposed to guarantee the existence and uniqueness of the true solution, so the numerical results given here were obtained under quite general conditions.

The authors determine all the absolutely irreducible representations of degree up to 250 of quasi-simple finite groups, excluding groups that are of Lie type in their defining characteristic. Additional information is also given on the Frobenius-Schur indicators and the Brauer character fields of the representations.

Let E1 and E2 be ordinary elliptic curves over a finite field Fp such that #E1(Fp) = #E2(Fp). Tate's isogeny theorem states that there is an isogeny from E1 to E2 which is defined over Fp. The goal of this paper is to describe a probabilistic algorithm for constructing such an isogeny.

The algorithm proposed in this paper has exponential complexity in the worst case. Nevertheless, it is efficient in certain situations (that is, when the class number of the endomorphism ring is small). The significance of these results to elliptic curve cryptography is discussed.

We discuss the Mordell–Weil sieve as a general technique for proving results concerning rational points on a given curve. In the special case of curves of genus 2, we describe quite explicitly how the relevant local information can be obtained if one does not want to restrict to mod p information at primes of good reduction. We describe our implementation of the Mordell–Weil sieve algorithm and discuss its efficiency.

Supplementary materials are available with this article.

This paper announces the creation of a database for number fields. It describes the contents and the methods of access, indicates the origin of the polynomials, and formulates the aims of this collection of fields.

In this paper, we define the geometric median for a probability measure on a Riemannian manifold, give its characterization and a natural condition to ensure its uniqueness. In order to compute the geometric median in practical cases, we also propose a subgradient algorithm and prove its convergence as well as estimating the error of approximation and the rate of convergence. The convergence property of this subgradient algorithm, which is a generalization of the classical Weiszfeld algorithm in Euclidean spaces to the context of Riemannian manifolds, also improves a recent result of P. T. Fletcher et al. [NeuroImage 45 (2009) S143–S152].

In this paper, the authors examine a number of ways of implementing characteristic three arithmetic for use in cryptosystems based on the Tate pairing. Three alternative representations of the field elements are examined, and the resulting algorithms for the field addition, multiplication and cubing are compared. Issues related to the arithmetic of supersingular elliptic curves over fields of characteristic three are also examined. Details of how to compute the Tate pairing itself are not covered, since these are well documented elsewhere.

The decision Diffie-Hellman problem (DDH) is a central computational problem in cryptography. It is known that the Weil and Tate pairings can be used to solve many DDH problems on elliptic curves. Distortion maps are an important tool for solving DDH problems using pairings, and it is known that distortion maps exist for all super-singular elliptic curves. An algorithm is presented here to construct suitable distortion maps. The algorithm is efficient on the curves that are usable in practice, and hence all DDH problems on these curves are easy. The issue of which DDH problems on ordinary curves are easy is also discussed.

A sequence of finite-dimensional quotients of affine Hecke algebras is studied. Each element of the sequence is constructed so as to have a weight space labelling scheme for Specht⁄standard modules. As in the weight space formalism of algebraic Lie theory, there is an action of an affine reflection group on this weight space that fixes the set of labelling weights. A linkage principle is proved in each case. Further, it is shown that the simplest non-trivial example may essentially be identified with the blob algebra (a physically motivated quasihereditary algebra whose representation theory is very well understood by Lie-theory-like methods). An extended role is hence proposed for Soergel's tilting algorithm, away from its algebraic Lie theory underpinning, in determining the simple content of standard modules for these algebras. This role is explicitly verified in the blob algebra case. A tensor space representation of the blob algebra is constructed, as a candidate for a full tilting module (subsequently proven to be so in a paper by Martin and Ryom-Hansen), further evidencing the extended utility of Lie-theoretic methods. Possible generalisations of this representation to other elements of the sequence are discussed.

The security of several homomorphic encryption schemes depends on the hardness of variants of the approximate common divisor (ACD) problem. We survey and compare a number of lattice-based algorithms for the ACD problem, with particular attention to some very recently proposed variants of the ACD problem. One of our main goals is to compare the multivariate polynomial approach with other methods. We find that the multivariate polynomial approach is not better than the orthogonal lattice algorithm for practical cryptanalysis.

We also briefly discuss a sample-amplification technique for ACD samples and a pre-processing algorithm similar to the Blum–Kalai–Wasserman algorithm for learning parity with noise. The details of this work are given in the full version of the paper.

The minimal degrees of faithful representations of all sporadic simple groups and their covering groups are determined in this paper.

We assign names and new generators to the transitive groups of degree up to 15, reflecting their structure.