Aicke Hinrichs

Aicke Hinrichs, Erich Novak, Mario Ullrich et al.

We prove the curse of dimensionality for multivariate integration of C^r functions: The number of needed function values to achieve an error ε is larger than c_r (1+γ)^d for ε\le ε_0, where c_r,γ>0 and d is the dimension. The proofs are based on volume estimates for r=1 together with smoothing by convolution. This allows us to obtain smooth fooling functions for r>1.

Aicke Hinrichs, Erich Novak, Henryk Wozniakowski

We believe that discontinuous linear information is never more powerful than continuous linear information for approximating continuous operators. We prove such a result in the worst case setting. In the randomized setting we consider compact linear operators defined between Hilbert spaces. In this case, the use of discontinuous linear information in the randomized setting cannot be much more powerful than continuous linear information in the worst case setting. These results can be applied when function evaluations are used even if function values are defined only almost everywhere.

Aicke Hinrichs, Erich Novak, Henryk Woźniakowski

We study the integration and approximation problems for monotone and convex bounded functions that depend on $d$ variables, where $d$ can be arbitrarily large. We consider the worst case error for algorithms that use finitely many function values. We prove that these problems suffer from the curse of dimensionality. That is, one needs exponentially many (in $d$) function values to achieve an error $ε$.

Aicke Hinrichs, Erich Novak, Mario Ullrich et al.

We mainly study numerical integration of real valued functions defined on the $d$-dimensional unit cube with all partial derivatives up to some finite order $r\ge1$ bounded by one. It is well known that optimal algorithms that use $n$ function values achieve the error rate $n^{-r/d}$, where the hidden constant depends on $r$ and $d$. Here we prove explicit error bounds without hidden constants and, in particular, show that the optimal order of the error is $\min \bigl\{1, d \, n^{-r/d}\bigr\}$, where now the hidden constant only depends on $r$, not on $d$. For $n=m^d$, this optimal order can be achieved by (tensor) product rules. We also provide lower bounds for integration defined over an arbitrary open domain of volume one. We briefly discuss how lower bounds for integration may be applied for other problems such as multivariate approximation and optimization.

Aicke Hinrichs, David Krieg, Erich Novak et al.

We study approximation and integration problems and compare the quality of optimal information with the quality of random information. For some problems random information is almost optimal and for some other problems random information is much worse than optimal information. We prove new results and give a short survey of known results.

Josef Dick, Aicke Hinrichs, Friedrich Pillichshammer

In this survey paper we discuss some tools and methods which are of use in quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) theory. We group them in chapters on Numerical Analysis, Harmonic Analysis, Algebra and Number Theory, and Probability Theory. We do not provide a comprehensive survey of all tools, but focus on a few of them, including reproducing and covariance kernels, Littlewood-Paley theory, Riesz products, Minkowski's fundamental theorem, exponential sums, diophantine approximation, Hoeffding's inequality and empirical processes, as well as other tools. We illustrate the use of these methods in QMC using examples.

Aicke Hinrichs, Joscha Prochno, Mario Ullrich

We prove the curse of dimensionality in the worst case setting for multivariate numerical integration for various classes of smooth functions. We prove the results when the domains are isotropic convex bodies with small diameter satisfying a universal $ψ_2$-estimate. In particular, we obtain the result for the important class of volume-normalized $\ell_p^d$-balls in the complete regime $2\leq p \leq \infty$. This extends a result in a work of A. Hinrichs, E. Novak, M. Ullrich and H. Woźniakowski [J. Complexity, 30(2), 117-143, 2014] to the whole range $2\leq p \leq \infty$, and additionally provides a unified approach. The key ingredient in the proof is a deep result from the theory of Asymptotic Geometric Analysis, the thin-shell volume concentration estimate due to O. Guédon and E. Milman. The connection of Asymptotic Geometric Analysis and Information-based Complexity revealed in this work seems promising and is of independent interest.

Aicke Hinrichs, Jens Oettershagen

We investigate quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) integration of bivariate periodic functions with dominating mixed smoothness of order one. While there exist several QMC constructions which asymptotically yield the optimal rate of convergence of $\mathcal{O}(N^{-1}\log(N)^{\frac{1}{2}})$, it is yet unknown which point set is optimal in the sense that it is a global minimizer of the worst case integration error. We will present a computer-assisted proof by exhaustion that the Fibonacci lattice is the unique minimizer of the QMC worst case error in periodic $H^1_\text{mix}$ for small $N$. Moreover, we investigate the situation for pointsets whose cardinality $N$ is not a Fibonacci number. It turns out that for $N=1,2,3,5,7,8,12,13$ the optimal point sets are integration lattices.

Josef Dick, Aicke Hinrichs, Lev Markhasin et al.

The $L_p$-discrepancy is a quantitative measure for the irregularity of distribution modulo one of infinite sequences. In 1986 Proinov proved for all $p>1$ a lower bound for the $L_p$-discrepancy of general infinite sequences in the $d$-dimensional unit cube, but it remained an open question whether this lower bound is best possible in the order of magnitude until recently. In 2014 Dick and Pillichshammer gave a first construction of an infinite sequence whose order of $L_2$-discrepancy matches the lower bound of Proinov. Here we give a complete solution to this problem for all finite $p > 1$. We consider so-called order $2$ digital $(t,d)$-sequences over the finite field with two elements and show that such sequences achieve the optimal order of $L_p$-discrepancy simultaneously for all $p \in (1,\infty)$.

Aicke Hinrichs, Peter Kritzer, Friedrich Pillichshammer et al.

The paper considers linear problems on weighted spaces of multivariate functions of many variables. The main questions addressed are: When is it possible to approximate the solution for the original function of very many variables by the solution for the same function; however with all but the first $k$ variables set to zero, so that the corresponding error is small? What is the truncation dimension, i.e., the smallest number $k=k(\varepsilon)$ such that the corresponding error is bounded by a given error demand $\varepsilon$? Surprisingly, $k(\varepsilon)$ could be very small even for weights with a modest speed of convergence to zero.

Michael Gnewuch, Mario Hefter, Aicke Hinrichs et al.

We consider $γ$-weighted anchored and ANOVA spaces of functions with mixed first order partial derivatives bounded in a weighted $L_p$ norm with $1 \leq p \leq \infty$. The domain of the functions is $D^d$, where $D \subseteq \mathbb{R}$ is a bounded or unbounded interval. We provide conditions on the weights $γ$ that guarantee that anchored and ANOVA spaces are equal (as sets of functions) and have equivalent norms with equivalence constants uniformly or polynomially bounded in $d$. Moreover, we discuss applications of these results to integration and approximation of functions on $D^d$.

Aicke Hinrichs, Friedrich Pillichshammer, Shu Tezuka

We study the weighted star discrepancy of the Halton sequence. In particular, we show that the Halton sequence achieves strong polynomial tractability for the weighted star discrepancy for product weights $(γ_j)_{j \ge 1}$ under the mildest condition on the weight sequence known so far for explicitly constructive sequences. The condition requires $\sup_{d \ge 1} \max_{\emptyset \not= \mathfrak{u} \subseteq [d]} \prod_{j \in \mathfrak{u}} (j γ_j) < \infty$. The same result holds for Niederreiter sequences and for other types of digital sequences. Our results are true also for the weighted unanchored discrepancy.

Aicke Hinrichs, Lev Markhasin

The L_2-discrepancy measures the irregularity of the distribution of a finite point set. In this note we prove lower bounds for the L_2 discrepancy of arbitrary N-point sets. Our main focus is on the two-dimensional case. Asymptotic upper and lower estimates of the L_2-discrepancy in dimension 2 are well-known and are of the sharp order sqrt(log N). Nevertheless the gap in the constants between the best known lower and upper bounds is unsatisfactory large for a two-dimensional problem. Our lower bound improves upon this situation considerably. The main method is an adaption of the method of K. F. Roth using the Fourier coefficients of the discrepancy function with respect to the Haar basis.

Aicke Hinrichs, Joscha Prochno, Mario Ullrich et al.

In this manuscript we introduce and study an extended version of the minimal dispersion of point sets, which has recently attracted considerable attention. Given a set $\mathscr P_n=\{x_1,\dots,x_n\}\subset [0,1]^d$ and $k\in\{0,1,\dots,n\}$, we define the $k$-dispersion to be the volume of the largest box amidst a point set containing at most $k$ points. The minimal $k$-dispersion is then given by the infimum over all possible point sets of cardinality $n$. We provide both upper and lower bounds for the minimal $k$-dispersion that coincide with the known bounds for the classical minimal dispersion for a surprisingly large range of $k$'s.

Aicke Hinrichs, Gerhard Larcher

We give an improved lower bound for the $L_2$-discrepancy of finite point sets in the unit square.

Christoph Aistleitner, Aicke Hinrichs

In 2004 the second author of the present paper proved that a point set in $[0,1]^d$ which has star-discrepancy at most $\varepsilon$ must necessarily consist of at least $c_{abs} d \varepsilon^{-1}$ points. Equivalently, every set of $n$ points in $[0,1]^d$ must have star-discrepancy at least $c_{abs} d n^{-1}$. The original proof of this result uses methods from Vapnik--Chervonenkis theory and from metric entropy theory. In the present paper we give an elementary combinatorial proof for the same result, which is based on identifying a sub-box of $[0,1]^d$ which has approximately $d$ elements of the point set on its boundary. Furthermore, we show that a point set for which no such box exists is rather irregular, and must necessarily have a large star-discrepancy.

Christoph Aistleitner, Aicke Hinrichs, Daniel Rudolf

The problem of finding the largest empty axis-parallel box amidst a point configuration is a classical problem in computational geometry. It is known that the volume of the largest empty box is of asymptotic order $1/n$ for $n\to\infty$ and fixed dimension $d$. However, it is natural to assume that the volume of the largest empty box increases as $d$ gets larger. In the present paper we prove that this actually is the case: for every set of $n$ points in $[0, 1]^d$ there exists an empty box of volume at least $c_d n^{-1}$ , where $c_d \to \infty$ as $d\to \infty$. More precisely, $c_d$ is at least of order roughly $\log d$.

Michael Gnewuch, Mario Hefter, Aicke Hinrichs et al.

We study embeddings and norm estimates for tensor products of weighted reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces. These results lead to a transfer principle that is directly applicable to tractability studies of multivariate problems as integration and approximation, and to their infinite-dimensional counterparts. In an application we consider weighted tensor product Sobolev spaces of mixed smoothness of any integer order, equipped with the classical, the anchored, or the ANOVA norm. Here we derive new results for multivariate and infinite-dimensional integration.

Aicke Hinrichs, Jan Schneider

We consider weighted anchored and ANOVA spaces of functions with first order mixed derivatives bounded in $L_p$. Recently, Hefter, Ritter and Wasilkowski established conditions on the weights in the cases $p=1$ and $p=\infty$ which ensure equivalence of the corresponding norms uniformly in the dimension or only polynomially dependent on the dimension. We extend these results to the whole range of $p\in [1,\infty]$. It is shown how this can be achieved via interpolation.

Aicke Hinrichs, Lev Markhasin, Jens Oettershagen et al.

We investigate quasi-Monte Carlo rules for the numerical integration of multivariate periodic functions from Besov spaces $S^r_{p,q}B(\mathbb{T}^d)$ with dominating mixed smoothness $1/p<r<2$. We show that order 2 digital nets achieve the optimal rate of convergence $N^{-r} (\log N)^{(d-1)(1-1/q)}$. The logarithmic term does not depend on $r$ and hence improves the known bound provided by J. Dick for the special case of Sobolev spaces $H^r_{\text{mix}}(\mathbb{T}^d)$. Secondly, the rate of convergence is independent of the integrability $p$ of the Besov space, which allows for sacrificing integrability in order to gain Besov regularity. Our method combines characterizations of periodic Besov spaces with dominating mixed smoothness via Faber bases with sharp estimates of Haar coefficients for the discrepancy function of higher order digital nets. Moreover, we provide numerical computations which indicate that this bound also holds for the case $r=2$.

Aicke Hinrichs, Sebastian Mayer

We prove sharp upper bounds on the entropy numbers $e_k(S^{d-1}_p,\ell_q^d)$ of the $p$-sphere in $\ell_q^d$ in the case $k \geq d$ and $0< p \leq q \leq \infty$. In particular, we close a gap left open in recent work of the second author, T. Ullrich and J. Vybiral. We also investigate generalizations to spheres of general finite-dimensional quasi-Banach spaces.

Aicke Hinrichs, Erich Novak

We study cubature formulas for d-dimensional integrals with an arbitrary symmetric weight function of tensor product form. We present a construction that yields a high polynomial exactness: for fixed degree l=5 or l=7 and large dimension, the number of knots is only slightly larger than the lower bound of Möller and much smaller compared to the known constructions. We also show, for any odd degree l=2k+1, that the minimal number of points is almost independent of the weight function. This is also true for the integration over the (Euclidean) sphere.