Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

In the first talk I will introduce the main constructions, many of which are classical, from scratch. This part will be introductory and accessible to a general audience with a basic knowledge of topology. This introduction will also serve as preparation for the main talk in which I will outline the proof and discuss some applications.

The goal of this talk is to explain the sense in which the natural algebraic structure of the singular chains on a path-connected space determines its fundamental group functorially. This new basic piece about the algebraic topology of spaces, which tells us that the fundamental group may be determined from homological data, has several interesting and deep implications. An example of a corollary of our statement is the following extension of a classical theorem of Whitehead: a continuous map between path-connected pointed topological spaces is a weak homotopy equivalence if and only if the induced map between the differential graded coalgebras of singular chains is a Koszul weak equivalence (i.e. a quasi-isomorphism after applying the cobar functor). A deeper implication, which is work in progress, is that this allows us to give a complete description of infinity groupoids in terms of homological algebra.

There are three main ingredients that come into play in order to give a precise formulation and proof of our main statement: 1) we extend a classical result of F. Adams from 1956 regarding the “cobar construction” as an algebraic model for the based loop space of a simply connected space, 2) we make use of the homotopical symmetry of the chain approximations to the diagonal map on a space, and 3) we apply a duality theory for algebraic structures known as Koszul duality. This is joint work with Mahmoud Zeinalian and Felix Wierstra.

Although studying numbers seems to have little to do with shapes, geometry has become an indispensable tool in number theory during the last 70 years. Deligne's proof of the Weil Conjectures, Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, and Faltings's proof of the Mordell Conjecture all require machinery from Grothendieck's algebraic geometry. It is less frequent to find instances where tools from number theory have been used to deduce theorems in geometry. In this talk, we will introduce one tool from each of these subjects -- Galois representations in number theory and cohomology in geometry -- and explain how arithmetic can be used as a tool to prove some important conjectures in geometry. More precisely, we will discuss ongoing joint work with Laure Flapan in which we prove the Hodge and Tate Conjectures for self-products of 16 K3 surfaces using arithmetic techniques.

We will go over hyperfields and polynomials over hyperfields. We will discuss the current theory as well as new directions.

Animal behavior is often quantified through subjective, incomplete variables that may mask essential dynamics. Here, we develop a behavioral state space in which the full instantaneous state is smoothly unfolded as a combination of short-time posture dynamics. Our technique is tailored to multivariate observations and extends previous reconstructions through the use of maximal prediction. Applied to high-resolution video recordings of the roundworm C. elegans, we discover a low-dimensional state space dominated by three sets of cyclic trajectories corresponding to the worm's basic stereotyped motifs: forward, backward, and turning locomotion. In contrast to this broad stereotypy, we find variability in the presence of locally-unstable dynamics, and this unpredictability shows signatures of deterministic chaos: a collection of unstable periodic orbits together with a positive maximal Lyapunov exponent. The full Lyapunov spectrum is symmetric with positive, chaotic exponents driving variability balanced by negative, dissipative exponents driving stereotypy. The symmetry is indicative of damped, driven Hamiltonian dynamics underlying the worm's movement control.

Pollen grain surface morphologies are famously diverse, and each species displays a unique, replicable pattern. The function of these microstructures, however, has not been elucidated. We show electron microscopy evidence that the templating of these patterns is formed by a phase separation of a polysaccharide mixture on the cell membrane surface. Here we present a Landau theory of phase transitions to ordered states describing all extant pollen morphologies. We show that 10% of all morphologies can be characterized as equilibrium states with a well-defined wavelength of the pattern. The rest of the patterns have a range of wavelengths on the surface that can be recapitulated by exploring the evolution of a conserved dynamics model. We then perform an evolutionary trait reconstruction. Surprisingly, we find that although the equilibrium states have evolved multiple times, evolution has not favored these ordered-polyhedral like shapes and perhaps their patterning is simply a natural consequence of a phase separation process without cross-linkers.  

  We are interested in arithmetic progressions in positive measure subsets of [0,1]^d. After a counterexample by Bourgain, it seemed as if nothing could be said about the longest interval formed by sizes of their gaps. However, Cook, Magyar, and Pramanik gave a positive result for 3-term progressions if their gaps are measured in the l^p-norm for p other than 1, 2, and infinity, and the dimension d is large enough. We establish an appropriate generalization of their result to longer progressions. The main difficulty lies in handling a class of multilinear singular integrals associated with arithmetic progressions that includes the well-known multilinear Hilbert transforms, bounds for which still constitute an open problem. As a substitute, we use the previous work with Durcik and Thiele on power-type cancellation of those transforms, which was, in turn, motivated by a desire to quantify the results of Tao and Zorin-Kranich. This is joint work with Polona Durcik (Caltech).

In the world of 4 manifolds, finding exotic structures on 4 manifolds is considered one of most interesting and difficult problems. I will give a brief history of this and explain a very interesting tool "knot surgery" defined by Fintushel and Stern. In this talk I will mostly focused on drawing pictures. If time permits, I will talk various interesting applications.

Let $K$ be a n dimensional convex body with of volume $1$. and barycenter of $K$ is the origin.  It is known that $|K \cap -K|>2^{-n}$.  Via thin shell estimate by Lee-Vempala (earlier versions were done by Guedon-Milman, Fleury, Klartag), we improve the bound by a sub-exponential factor.  Furthermore, we can improve  the Hadwiger’s Conjecture in the non-symmetric case by a sub-exponential factor.  This is a joint work with Boaz A. Slomka, Tomasz Tkocz, and Beatrice-Helen Vritsiou. 

Several recent papers presented exact time-periodic solutions in shear flow simulations at moderate Reynolds numbers. Although some of these studies demonstrated similarities between turbulence and the unstable periodic orbits, whether one can utilize these orbits for turbulence modeling remained unclear. We argue that this can be achieved by measuring the frequency of turbulence's visits to the periodic orbits. To this end, we adapt methods from computational topology and develop a metric that quantifies shape similarity between the projections of turbulent trajectories and periodic orbits. We demonstrate our method by applying it in a numerical study of the three-dimensional Navier--Stokes equations under sinusoidal forcing. Streamed online: https://gatech.bluejeans.com/7678987299

The classical isoperimetric problem consists in finding among all sets with the same volume (measure) the one that minimizes the surface area (perimeter measure). In the Euclidean case, balls are known to solve this problem. To formulate the isoperimetric problem, or an isoperimetric inequality, in more general settings, requires in particular a good notion of perimeter measure.

The starting point of this talk will be a characterization of sets of finite perimeter original to Ledoux that involves the heat semigroup associated to a given stochastic process in the space. This approach put in connection isoperimetric problems and functions of bounded variation (BV) via heat semigroups, and we will extend these ideas to develop a natural definition of BV functions and sets of finite perimeter on metric measure spaces. In particular, we will obtain corresponding isoperimetric inequalies in this setting.

The main assumption on the underlying space will be a non-negative curvature type condition that we call weak Bakry-Émery and is satisfied in many examples of interest, also in fractals such as (infinite) Sierpinski gaskets and carpets. The results are part of joint work with F. Baudoin, L. Chen, L. Rogers, N. Shanmugalingam and A. Teplyaev.

Tutte proved that every 4-connected planar graph contains a Hamilton cycle, but
there are 3-connected $n$-vertex graphs whose longest cycles have length
$\Theta(n^{\log_32})$. On the other hand,  Jackson and Wormald proved that an
essentially 4-connected $n$-vertex planar graph contains a cycle of
length at least $(2n+4)/5$, which was improved to $5(n+2)/8$ by Fabrici {\it et al}.  We improve this bound to $\lceil (2n+6)/3\rceil$ for $n\ge 6$ by proving a quantitative version of a result of Thomassen,
 and the bound is best possible.

 It is a classical theorem of Roth that every dense subset of $\left\{1,\ldots,N\right\}$ contains a nontrivial three-term arithmetic progression. Quantitatively, results of Sanders, Bloom, and Bloom-Sisask tell us that subsets of relative density at least $1/(\log N)^{1-\epsilon}$ already have this property. In this talk, we will discuss some sets of $N$ integers which unlike $\left\{1,\ldots,N\right\}$ do not contain nontrivial four-term arithmetic progressions, but which still have the property that all of their subsets of density at least $1/(\log N)^{1-\epsilon}$ must contain a three-term arithmetic progression. Perhaps a bit surprisingly, these sets turn out not to have as many three-term progressions as one might be inclined to guess, so we will also address the question of how many three-term progressions can a four-term progression free set may have. Finally, we will also discuss about some related results over $\mathbb{F}_{q}^n$. Based on joint works with Jacob Fox and Oliver Roche-Newton.