Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

Fruitful interactions between arithmetic geometry and dynamical systems have emerged in recent years. In this talk I will illustrate how insights from complex dynamics can be employed to study problems from arithmetic geometry. And conversely how arithmetic geometry can be used in the study of dynamical systems. The motivating questions are inspired by a recurring phenomenon in arithmetic geometry known as `unlikely intersections' and conjectures of Pink and Zilber therein. More specifically, I will discuss work toward understanding the distribution of preperiodic points in subvarieties of families of rational maps.

In the 20th century, Thurston proved two classification theorems, one for surface homeomorphisms and one for branched covers of surfaces.  While the theorems have long been understood to be analogous, we will present new work with Belk and Winarski showing that the two theorems are in fact special cases of one Ubertheorem.  We will also discuss joint work with Belk, Lanier, Strenner, Taylor, Winarski, and Yurttas on algorithmic aspects of Thurston’s theorem.  This talk is meant to be accessible to a wide audience.

The last decade has witnessed great interest in the study of divisors of graphs and a fascinating combinatorially-rich picture has emerged. The class of break divisors has attracted particular attention, for reasons both geometric and combinatorial. I will present several representation-theoretic results in this context.

I will demonstrate how certain quotients of polynomial rings by power ideals, already studied by Ardila-Postnikov, Sturmfels-Xu, Postnikov-Shapiro amongst others, arise by applying the method of orbit harmonics to break divisors. These quotients then naturally afford symmetric group representations which are not entirely understood yet. By describing the invariant spaces of these representations in terms of break divisors, I will answer a combinatorial question from the setting of cohomological Hall algebras.

In this talk we report on recent works (with A. Cosso, I. Kharroubi, H. Pham, M. Rosestolato) on the optimal control of (possibly path dependent) McKean-Vlasov equations valued in Hilbert spaces. On the other side we present the first ideas of a work with S. Federico, D. Ghilli and M. Rosestolato, on Mean Field Games in infinite dimension.

We will begin by presenting some examples for both topics and their relations. Then most of the time will be devoted to the first topic and the main results (the dynamic programming principle, the law invariance property of the value function, the Ito formula and the fact that the value function is a viscosity solution of the HJB equation, a first comparison result).

We conclude, if time allows, with the first ideas on the solution of the HJB-FKP system arising in mean Field Games in infinite dimension.

The purpose of this talk is to discuss our recent work on multi-frequency quasi-periodic cocycles, establishing continuity (both in cocycle and jointly in cocycle and frequency) of the Lyapunov exponent for non-identically singular cocycles. Analogous results for one-frequency cocycles have been known for over a decade, but the multi-frequency results have been limited to either Diophantine frequencies (continuity in cocycle) or SL(2,C) cocycles (joint continuity). We will discuss the main points of our argument, which extends earlier work of Bourgain.

Memory bounds for continual learning

Abstract: Continual learning, or lifelong learning, is a formidable current challenge to machine learning. It requires the learner to solve a sequence of k different learning tasks, one after the other, while with each new task learned it retains its aptitude for earlier tasks; the continual learner should scale better than the obvious solution of developing and maintaining a separate learner for each of the k tasks.  We embark on a complexity-theoretic study of continual learning in the PAC framework. We make novel uses of communication complexity to establish that any continual learner, even an improper one, needs memory that grows linearly with k, strongly suggesting that the problem is intractable.  When logarithmically many passes over the learning tasks are allowed, we provide an algorithm based on multiplicative weights update whose memory requirement scales well; we also establish that improper learning is necessary for such performance. We conjecture that these results may lead to new promising approaches to continual learning.

Based on the joint work with Xi Chen and Christos Papadimitriou.

Two of the most influential theorems in discrete mathematics state, respectively, that diagonal Ramsey numbers grow exponentially and that error-correcting codes for noisy channels exist up to the information limit. The former, proved by Erdős in 1947 using random graphs, led to the development of the probabilistic method in combinatorics. The latter, proved by Shannon in 1948 using random codes, is one of the founding results of coding theory. Since then, the probabilistic method has been a cornerstone in the development of both Ramsey theory and coding theory. In this talk, we highlight a few important applications of the probabilistic method in these two parallel but interconnected worlds. We then present new results on Ramsey numbers of graphs and hypergraphs and codes correcting deletion errors, all based on probabilistic ideas.

This talk is concerned with α-Hölder-continuous weak solutions of the incompressible Euler equations. A great deal of recent effort has led to the conclusion that the space of Euler flows is flexible when α is below 1/3, the famous Onsager regularity. We show how convex integration techniques can be extended above the Onsager regularity to all α<1/2 in the case of the forced Euler equations. This leads to a new non-uniqueness theorem for any initial data. This work is joint with Aynur Bulut and Manh Khang Huynh.

Weighted inequalities for singular integral operators are central in the study of non-homogeneous harmonic analysis. Two weight inequalities for singular integral operators, in-particular attracted attention as they can be essential in the perturbation theory of unitary matrices, spectral theory of Jacobi matrices and PDE's. In this talk, I will discuss several results concerning the two weight inequalities for various Calder\'on-Zygmund operators in both Euclidean setting and in the more generic setting of spaces of homogeneous type in the sense of Coifman and Weiss.

The two-weight conjecture for singular integral operators T was first raised by Nazarov, Treil and Volberg on finding the real variable characterization of the two weights u and v so that T is bounded on the weighted $L^2$ spaces. This conjecture was only solved completely for the Hilbert transform on R until recently. In this talk, I will describe our result that resolves a part of this conjecture for any Calder\'on-Zygmund operator on the spaces of homogeneous type by providing a complete set of sufficient conditions on the pair of weights. We will also discuss the existence of similar analogues for multilinear Calder\'on-Zygmund operators.

Algebraic Combinatorics originated in Algebra and Representation Theory, yet its objects and methods turned out applicable to other fields from Probability to Computer Science. Its flagship hook-length formula for the number of Standard Young Tableaux, or the beautiful Littlewood-Richardson rule have inspired large areas of study and development. We will see what lies beyond the reach of such nice product formulas and combinatorial interpretations and enter the realm of Computational Complexity and Asymptotics. We will also show how an 80 year old open problem on Kronecker coefficients of the Symmetric group lead to the disprove of the wishful approach towards the resolution of the algebraic P vs NP Millennium problem.

In the first talk of this series we introduced the definition of Chebyshev polynomials on compact subsets of the complex plane and discussed some properties. This week, after a short review of  the first talk, we will start to discuss asymptotic properties of Chebyshev polynomials and how they are related with logarithmic potential theory. Our main focus will be the necessary concepts from potential theory needed in the study of asymptotic properties of Chebyshev polynomials.  

Large-scale computing systems are massively important, using over 1% of the world's electricity. It is vital that these systems be both fast and resource-efficient, and scheduling theory is a key tool towards that goal. However, prior scheduling theory is not equipped to handle large multiserver systems, with little extant theoretical analysis, and no optimality results.

I focus on two important multiserver scheduling systems: The one-server-per-job (M/G/k) model, and the multiple-servers-per-job (MSJ) model. In the M/G/k, we prove the first optimality result, demonstrating that the Shortest Remaining Processing Time (SRPT) policy yields asymptotically optimal mean response time in the heavy traffic limit. In the MSJ model, we prove the first mean response analysis for any scheduling policy, for a novel policy called ServerFilling. Moreover, we introduce the ServerFilling-SRPT policy, for which we present the first asymptotic optimality result for the MSJ model. Each result progresses by proving novel bounds on relevant work, and using novel methods to convert those bounds to bounds on mean response time. These results push the state of the art of scheduling theory ever closer to applicability to today's large-scale computing systems.

Algebraic matroids record the algebraic dependencies among elements in a field extension, similar to the linear dependencies of vectors in a vector space. Realizing a given matroid by elements in a field extension can depend on the characteristic of the field. I will talk about the possible characteristic sets of algebraic matroids. An essential tool is the one-dimensional group construction of an algebraic matroid, which turns the realization problem for algebraic matroids into a linear problem over the endomorphism ring of a one-dimensional algebraic group.

Understanding the behavior of large physical systems is a problem of fundamental importance in mathematical physics. Analysis of systems of many interacting particles is key for understanding various phenomena from physical sciences (e.g. gases in non-equilibrium, galactic dynamics) to social sciences (e.g. modeling social networks). Similarly, the description of systems of weakly nonlinear interacting waves, referred to as wave turbulence theory, finds a wide range of applications from solid state physics and water waves to plasma theory and oceanography. However, with the size of the system of interest being extremely large, deterministic prediction of its behavior is practically impossible, and one resorts to an averaging description. In this talk, we will discuss about kinetic theory, which is a mesoscopic framework to study the qualitative properties of large systems. As we will see, the main idea behind kinetic theory is that, in order to identify averaging quantities of large systems, one studies their asymptotic behavior as the size of the system tends to infinity, with the hope that the limiting effective equation will reveal properties observed in a system of large, but finite size. We will focus on the Boltzmann equation, which is the effective equation for systems of interacting particles, and its higher order extensions, as well as the kinetic wave equation which describes systems of many nonlinearly interacting waves.

The Torelli group of a surface is a natural yet mysterious subgroup of the mapping class group.  We will discuss a few recent results about finiteness properties of the Torelli group, as well as a result about the cohomological dimension of the Johnson filtration.  

Smooth ergodic theory provides a framework for studying systems exhibiting dynamical chaos, features of which include sensitive dependence with respect to initial conditions, correlation decay (even for deterministic systems!) and complicated fractal-like attractor geometry. This talk will be an overview of some of these ideas as they apply to evolutionary PDE, with an emphasis on dissipative semilinear parabolic problems, and a discussion of some of my work in this direction, joint with: Lai-Sang Young and Sam Punshon-Smith. 

Mobile sampling concerns finding surfaces upon which any function with Fourier transform supported in a symmetric convex set must have some large values.   We shall describe a sharp sufficient for mobile sampling in terms of the surface density introduced by Unnikrishnan and Vetterli.  Joint work with Mishko Mitkovski and Manasa Vempati.

A central question in the field of optimal transport studies optimization problems involving two measures on a common metric space, a source and a target. The goal is to find a mapping from the source to the target, in a way that minimizes distances. A remarkable fact discovered by Caffarelli is that, in some specific cases of interest, the optimal transport maps on a Euclidean metric space are Lipschitz. Lipschitz regularity is a desirable property because it allows for the transfer of analytic properties between measures. This perspective has proven to be widely influential, with applications extending beyond the field of optimal transport.

In this talk, we will further explore the Lipschitz properties of transport maps. Our main observation is that, when one seeks Lipschitz mappings, the optimality conditions mentioned above do not play a major role. Instead of minimizing distances, we will consider a general construction of transport maps based on interpolation of measures, and introduce a set of techniques to analyze the Lipschitz constant of this construction. In particular, we will go beyond the Euclidean setting and consider Riemannian manifolds as well as infinite-dimensional spaces.

Some applications, such as functional inequalities, normal approximations, and generative diffusion models will also be discussed.

Gutzwiller semi-classical quantization, Boven-Sinai-Ruelle dynamical zeta functions for chaotic dynamical systems, statistical mechanics partition functions, and path integrals of quantum field theory are often presented in ways that make them appear as disjoint, unrelated theories. However, recent advances in describing fluid turbulence by its dynamical, deterministic Navier-Stokes underpinning, without any statistical assumptions, have led to a common field-theoretic description of both (low-dimension) chaotic dynamical systems, and (infinite-dimension) spatiotemporally turbulent flows. 

I have described the remarkable experimental progress connecting turbulence to deterministic dynamics in the Sept 24, 2023 colloquium (the recoding is available on the website below). In this seminar I will use a lattice discretized field theory in 1 and 1+1 dimension to explain how temporal `chaos', `spatiotemporal chaos' and `quantum chaos' are profitably cast into the same field-theoretic framework.

https://ChaosBook.org/overheads/spatiotemporal/

The talk will also be on Zoom:   GaTech.zoom.us/j/95338851370

Chip-firing asks a simple question: Given a group of people and an initial integer distribution of dollars among the people including people in debt, can we redistribute the money so that no one ends up in debt? This simple question with its origins in combinatorics can be reformulated using concepts from graph theory, linear algebra, graph orientation algorithms, and even divisors in Riemann surfaces. This presentation will go over a summary of Part 1 of Divisors and Sandpiles by Scott Corry and David Perkinson. Moreover, we will cover three various approaches to solve this problem: a linear algebra approach with the Laplacian, an algorithmic approach with Dhar's algorithm, and an algebraic geometry approach with a graph-theoretic version of the Riemann-Roch theorem by Baker and Norine. If we have time, we will investigate additional topics from Part 2 and Part 3. As true to the title, there will be a non-alcoholic drinking game involved with this presentation and participation will be completely voluntary. Limited refreshments (leftover Coca-Cola I found in the grad student lounge) and plastic cups will be served.

After finishing the proof of equivalence of the Chebyshev constant of a set and its logarithmic capacity, we will start to discuss classical and recent results on estimates and asymptotics of Chebyshev numbers.

We consider a service system where incoming tasks are instantaneously assigned to one out of many heterogeneous server pools. All the tasks sharing a server pool are executed in parallel and the execution times do not depend on the class of the server pool or the number of tasks currently contending for service. However, associated with each server pool is a utility function that does depend on the class of the server pool and the number of tasks currently sharing it. These features are characteristic of streaming and online gaming services, where the duration of tasks is mainly determined by the application but congestion can have a strong impact on the quality-of-service (e.g., video resolution and smoothness). We derive an upper bound for the mean overall utility in steady-state and introduce two load balancing policies that achieve this upper bound in a large-scale regime. Also, the transient and stationary behavior of these asymptotically optimal load balancing policies is characterized in the same large-scale regime.

Reaction networks are commonly used to model a variety of physical systems ranging from the microscopic world like cell biology and chemistry, to the macroscopic world like epidemiology and evolution biology. A biologically relevant property that reaction networks can have is absolute concentration robustness (ACR), which refers to when a steady-state species concentration is maintained even when initial conditions are changed. Networks with ACR have been observed experimentally, for example, in E. coli EnvZ-OmpR and IDHKP-IDH systems. Another reaction network property that might be desirable is multistationarity-the capacity for two or more steady states, since it is often associated with the capability for cellular signaling and decision-making.

While the two properties seem to be opposite, having both properties might be favorable as a biochemical network may require robustness in its internal operation while maintaining flexibility as a signal-response mechanism. As such, our driving motivation is to explore what network structures can produce ACR and multistationarity. We show that it is highly atypical for both properties to coexist in very small and very large reaction networks without special structures. However, it is possible for them to coexist in certain classes of reaction networks. I will discuss in detail one such class of networks, which consists of multisite phosphorylation-dephosphorylation cycles with a ``paradoxical enzyme".

Most of us have been taught geometry from the perspective of equations and how those equations act on a given space. But in the 1870’s, Felix Klein’s Erlangen program was more concerned about the maps that preserved the geometric structures of a space rather than the equations themselves. In this talk, I will present some modern results from this perspective and show details of how to reconstruct the equations that preserve geometric structures.

Mammalian cortical networks are known to process sensory information utilizing feedforward and feedback connections along the cortical hierarchy as well as intra-areal connections between different cortical layers. While feedback and feedforward signals have distinct layer-specific connectivity motifs preserved across species, the computational relevance of these connections is not known. Motivated by predictive coding theory, we study how expected and unexpected visual information is encoded along the cortical hierarchy, and how layer-specific feedforward and feedback connectivity contributes to differential, context-dependent representations of information across cortical layers, by analyzing experimental recordings of neural populations and also by building a recurrent neural network (RNN) model of the cortical microcircuitry. Experimental evidence shows that information about identity of the visual inputs and expectations are encoded in different areas of the mouse visual cortex, and simulations with our RNNs which incorporate biologically plausible connectivity motifs suggest that layer-specific feedforward and feedback connections may be the key contributor to this differential representation of information.
 

Marcus (1972) and de Oliveira (1982) conjectured  bounds on the determinantal range of the sum of a pair of normal matrices with prescribed eigenvalues.  We show that this determinantal range is a flattened solid twisted permutahedron, which is, in turn, a finite union of flattened solid twisted hypercubes with prescribed vertices.  This complete geometric description, in particular, proves the conjecture. Our techniques are based on classical Lie theory, geometry, and combinatorics. I will give a pre-seminar that will be accessible to 1st year graduate students who like matrices, and provides an easy introduction to the topic. This is joint work with Matt Speck.

Sampling is a fundamental and widespread algorithmic primitive that lies at the heart of Bayesian inference and scientific computing, among other disciplines. Recent years have seen a flood of works aimed at laying down the theoretical underpinnings of sampling, in analogy to the fruitful and widely used theory of convex optimization. In this talk, I will discuss some of my work in this area, focusing on new convergence guarantees obtained via a proximal algorithm for sampling, as well as a new framework for studying the complexity of non-log-concave sampling.

A source of richness in Teichmüller theory is that Teichmüller spaces have descriptions both in terms of group representations and in terms of hyperbolic structures and complex structures. A program in higher-rank Teichmüller theory is to understand to what extent there are analogous geometric interpretations of Hitchin components. In this talk, we will give a natural description of the SL(3,R) Hitchin component in terms of higher complex structures as first described by Fock and Thomas. Along the way, we will describe higher complex structures in terms of jets and discuss intrinsic structural features of Fock-Thomas spaces.

In this talk we will discuss an optimal control problem for stochastic differential delay equations. We will only consider the case with delays in the state. We will show how to rewrite the problem in a suitable infinite-dimensional Hilbert space. Then using the dynamic programming approach we will characterize the value function of the problem as the unique viscosity solution of an infinite dimensional Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation.  We will discuss partial C^{1,α}-regularity of the value function. This regularity result is particularly interesting since it permits to construct a candidate optimal feedback map which may allow to find an optimal feedback control. Finally we will discuss some ideas about the case in which delays also appear in the controls.

This is a joint work with S. Federico and A. Święch.

The theory of graph quasirandomness studies graphs that "look like" samples of the Erdős--Rényi
random graph $G_{n,p}$. The upshot of the theory is that several ways of comparing a sequence with
the random graph turn out to be equivalent. For example, two equivalent characterizations of
quasirandom graph sequences is as those that are uniquely colorable or uniquely orderable, that is,
all colorings (orderings, respectively) of the graphs "look approximately the same". Since then,
generalizations of the theory of quasirandomness have been obtained in an ad hoc way for several
different combinatorial objects, such as digraphs, tournaments, hypergraphs, permutations, etc.

The theory of graph quasirandomness was one of the main motivations for the development of the
theory of limits of graph sequences, graphons. Similarly to quasirandomness, generalizations of
graphons were obtained in an ad hoc way for several combinatorial objects. However, differently from
quasirandomness, for the theory of limits of combinatorial objects (continuous combinatorics), the
theories of flag algebras and theons developed limits of arbitrary combinatorial objects in a
uniform and general framework.

In this talk, I will present the theory of natural quasirandomness, which provides a uniform and
general treatment of quasirandomness in the same setting as continuous combinatorics. The talk will
focus on the first main result of natural quasirandomness: the equivalence of unique colorability
and unique orderability for arbitrary combinatorial objects. Although the theory heavily uses the
language and techniques of continuous combinatorics from both flag algebras and theons, no
familiarity with the topic is required as I will also briefly cover all definitions and theorems
necessary.

This talk is based on joint work with Alexander A. Razborov.

We shall discuss the asymptotics of singular values of the transfer matrices of ergodic Schroedinger and block-Schroedinger  operators. At a fixed value of the spectral parameter, the logarithmic asymptotics is almost surely given by the Lyapunov exponents; however, this is not, in general, true simultaneously for all the values of the parameter.  We shall try to explain the importance of these sets in various problems of spectral theory, and then review some of the earlier works on the subject and present some new results. Based on joint work with I. Goldsheid.

This talk will be online.  Meeting ID: 919 5236 6315.  Pleas note the unusual time!

 https://gatech.zoom.us/j/91390791493?pwd=QnpaWHNEOHZTVXlZSXFkYTJ0b0Q0UT09

Let T be an invertible measure preserving transformation of a standard infinite measure space (X,m). Then a Poisson suspension (X*,m*,T*) of the dynamical system (X,m,T) is a well studied object in ergodic theory (especially for the last 20 years). It has physical applications as a model for the ideal gas consisting of countably many non-interacting particles. A natural problem is to develop a nonsingular counterpart of the theory of Poisson suspensions. The following will be enlightened in the talk:

--- description of the m-nonsingular (i.e. preserving the equivalence class of m) transformations T such that T* is m*-nonsingular
---algebraic and topological properties of the group of all m*-nonsingular Poisson suspensions
--- an interplay between dynamical properties of T and T*
--- an example of a "phase transition" in the ergodic properties of T* depending on the scaling of m
--- applications to Kazhdan property (T), stationary (nonsingular) group actions and the Furstenberg entropy.

(joint work with Z. Kosloff and E. Roy)

We will continue to discuss lower and upper estimates of Widom factors. We will also introduce Cantor-type sets, constructed as the intersection of the level domains for simple sequences of polynomials. Using these Cantor-type sets we will prove some results on growth of Widom factors.

We demonstrate for the first time that ill-conditioned, non-smooth, constrained distributions in very high dimensions, upwards of 100,000, can be sampled efficiently in practice. Our algorithm incorporates constraints into the Riemannian version of Hamiltonian Monte Carlo and maintains sparsity. This allows us to achieve a mixing rate independent of condition numbers. On benchmark data sets from systems biology and linear programming, our algorithm outperforms existing packages by orders of magnitude. In particular, we achieve a 1,000-fold speed-up for sampling from the largest published human metabolic network (RECON3D). Our package has been incorporated into the COBRA toolbox. This is joint work with Yin Tat Lee, Ruoqi Shen, and Santosh Vempala.

The Zariski closure of the central path (which interior point algorithms track in convex optimization problems such as linear and semidefinite programs) is an algebraic curve, called the central curve. Its degree has been studied in relation to the complexity of these interior point algorithms.  We show that the degree of the central curve for generic semidefinite programs is equal to the maximum likelihood degree of linear concentration models.  This is joint work with Serkan Hoşten and Angélica Torres.

The finite index subgroups of a finitely presented group generate a topology on the group. We will discuss using examples how this relates to the organization of a group's finite quotients, and introduce the ideas of profinite rigidity and flexibility. 

Modern neural networks are usually over-parameterized—the number of parameters exceeds the number of training data. In this case the loss function tends to have many (or even infinite) global minima, which imposes a challenge of minima selection on optimization algorithms besides the convergence. Specifically, when training a neural network, the algorithm not only has to find a global minimum, but also needs to select minima with good generalization among many others. We study the mechanisms that facilitate global minima selection of optimization algorithms, as well as its connection with good generalization performance. First, with a linear stability theory, we show that stochastic gradient descent (SGD) favors global minima with flat and uniform landscape. Then, we build a theoretical connection of flatness and generalization performance based on a special multiplicative structure of neural networks. Connecting the two results, we develop generalization bounds for neural networks trained by SGD. Our bounds take the optimization process into consideration. Furthermore, we study the behavior of optimization algorithms around manifold of minima and reveal the exploration of algorithms from one minimum to another.

The fundamental groups of knot complements have lots of finite quotients. We give a criterion for a hyperbolic knot in the three-sphere to be distinguished (up to isotopy and mirroring) from every other knot in the three-sphere by the set of finite quotients of its fundamental group, and we use this criterion as well as recent work of Baldwin-Sivek to show that there are infinitely many hyperbolic knots distinguished (up to isotopy and mirroring) by finite quotients. 

We consider the 1+1 dimensional vector valued Principal Chiral Field model (PCF) obtained as a simplification of the Vacuum Einstein Field equations under the Belinski-Zakharov symmetry. PCF is an integrable model, but a rigorous description of its evolution is far from complete. Here we provide the existence of local solutions in a suitable chosen energy space, as well as small global smooth solutions under a certain non degeneracy condition. We also construct virial functionals which provide a clear description of decay of smooth global solutions inside the light cone. Finally, some applications are presented in the case of PCF solitons, a first step towards the study of its nonlinear stability. 

The braid group has many applications throughout the world of math due to its simple yet rich structure. In this talk we will focus on the Burau representation of the braid group, which has important implications in knot theory. Most notably, the open problem of faithfulness of the Burau representation of the braid group on 4 strands is equivalent to whether or not the Jones polynomial can detect the unknot. The Burau representation has a topological interpretation that uses the mapping class definition of the braid group. We'll introduce the braid group first and then discuss the Burau representation. We will go through examples for small n and discuss the proof of nonfaithfulness for n > 4. Time permitting, we may introduce the Gassner representation.

 We study a family of dynamical systems obtained by coupling a chaotic (Anosov) map on the two-dimensional torus -- the chaotic variable -- with the identity map on the one-dimensional torus -- the neutral variable -- through a dissipative interaction. We show that the  two systems synchronize, in the sense that the trajectories evolve toward an attracting invariant manifold, and that the full dynamics is conjugated to its linearization around the invariant manifold. When the interaction is small, the evolution of the neutral variable is very close to the identity and hence the neutral variable appears as a slow variable with respect to the fast chaotic variable: we show that, seen on a suitably long time scale, the slow variable effectively follows the solution of a deterministic differential equation obtained by averaging over the fast  variable.

The seminar can also be accessed online via zoom link: Meeting ID: 961 2577 3408

Group extensions are a natural way of building complicated groups out of simpler ones. We will develop techniques used to study group extensions. Through these techniques, we will motivate and discuss connections to the cohomology of groups. 

In the past few decades the problem of reconstructing high-dimensional functions taking values in abstract spaces from limited samples has received increasing attention, largely due to its relevance to uncertainty quantification (UQ) for computational science and engineering. These UQ problems are often posed in terms of parameterized partial differential equations whose solutions take values in Hilbert or Banach spaces. Impressive results have been achieved on such problems with deep learning (DL), i.e. machine learning with deep neural networks (DNN). This work focuses on approximating high-dimensional smooth functions taking values in reflexive and typically infinite-dimensional Banach spaces. Our novel approach to this problem is fully algorithmic, combining DL, compressed sensing, orthogonal polynomials, and finite element discretization. We present a full theoretical analysis for DNN approximation with explicit guarantees on the error and sample complexity, and a clear accounting of all sources of error. We also provide numerical experiments demonstrating the efficiency of DL at approximating such high-dimensional functions from limited data in UQ applications.
 

https://gatech.zoom.us/j/91390791493?pwd=QnpaWHNEOHZTVXlZSXFkYTJ0b0Q0UT09

The talk is about controllability for uncertain linear systems. Our approach is 
based on the Controllability Function (CF) method proposed by V.I. Korobov in 
1979. The CF method is a development of the Lyapunov function method and the 
dynamic programming method. The CF includes both approaches at a certain values 
of parameters. The main advance of the CF method is finiteness of the time of motion 
(settling-time function). 
In the talk the feedback synthesis problem for a chain of integrators system 
with continuous bounded unknown perturbations is considered. This problem consist 
in constructing a control in explicit form which depends on phase coordinates and 
steers an arbitrary initial point from a neighborhood of the origin to the origin in a 
finite time (settling-time function). Besides the control is satisfies some preassigned 
constrains. The range of the unknown perturbations such that the control solving the 
synthesis problem for the system without the perturbations also solves the synthesis 
problem for the perturbed system are found. This study shows the relations between 
the range of perturbations and the bounds of the settling-time function.
In particular the feedback synthesis problem for the motion of a material 
point with allowance for friction is solved. 
Keywords: chain of integrators, finite-time stability, robust control, settling 
time estimation, uncertain systems, unknown bounded perturbation

We will continue to focus on Cantor-type sets we introduced last week. Using them we will consider maximal growth rate and irregular behavior of Widom factors (nth Chebyshev number divided by nth power of logarithmic capacity). We will also discuss a recent result of Jacob Christiansen, Barry Simon and Maxim Zinchenko, which shows that Widom factors of Parreau-Widom sets are uniformly bounded.

Assemblies are subsets of neurons whose coordinated excitation is hypothesized to represent the subject's thinking of an object, idea, episode, or word. Consequently, they provide a promising basis for a theory of how neurons and synapses give rise to higher-level cognitive phenomena. The existence (and pivotal role) of assemblies was first proposed by Hebb, and has since been experimentally confirmed, as well as rigorously proven to emerge in the model of computation in the brain recently developed by Papadimitriou & Vempala. In light of contemporary studies which have documented the creation and activation of sequences of assemblies of neurons following training on tasks with sequential decisions, we study here the brain's mechanisms for working with sequences in the assemblies model of Papadimitriou & Vempala.  We show that (1) repeated presentation of a sequence of stimuli leads to the creation of a sequence of corresponding assemblies -- upon future presentation of any contiguous sub-sequence of stimuli, the corresponding assemblies are activated and continue until the end of the sequence; (2) when the stimulus sequence is projected to two brain areas in a "scaffold", both memorization and recall are more efficient, giving rigorous backing to the cognitive phenomenon that memorization and recall are easier with scaffolded memories; and (3) existing assemblies can be quite easily linked to simulate an arbitrary finite state machine (FSM), thereby capturing the brain's ability to memorize algorithms. This also makes the assemblies model capable of arbitrary computation simply in response to presentation of a suitable stimulus sequence, without explicit control commands. These findings provide a rigorous, theoretical explanation at the neuronal level of complex phenomena such as sequence memorization in rats and algorithm learning in humans, as well as a concrete hypothesis as to how the brain's remarkable computing and learning abilities could be realized.

Joint work with Christos Papadimitriou and Santosh Vempala.

The extremal function of a class of matroids maps each positive integer n to the maximum number of elements of a simple matroid in the class with rank at most n. We will present a result concerning the role of finite groups in minor-closed classes of matroids, and then use it to determine the extremal function for several natural classes of representable matroids. We will assume no knowledge of matroid theory. This is joint work with Jim Geelen and Peter Nelson.

In the Instanton and Heegaard Floer theories, a nearly fibered knot is one for which the top grading has rank 2. Sivek-Baldwin and Li-Ye showed that the guts (ie. the reduced sutured manifold complement) of a minimal genus Seifert surface of a nearly fibered knot has of one of three simple types.We show that nearly fibered knots with guts of two of these types have handle number 2 while those with guts of the third type have handle number 4.  Furthermore, we show that nearly fibered knots have unique incompressible Seifert surfaces rather than just unique minimal genus Siefert surfaces. This is joint work in progress with Fabiola Manjarrez-Gutierrez.

We will describe an elegant construction of potential counterexamples to the Smooth 4-Dimensional Poincaré Conjecture whose input is a fibered, homotopy-ribbon knot in the 3-sphere. The construction also produces links that are potential counterexamples to the Generalized Property R Conjecture, as well as balanced presentations of the trivial group that are potential counterexamples to the Andrews-Curtis Conjecture. We will then turn our attention to generalized square knots (connected sums of torus knots with their mirrors), which provide a setting where the potential counterexamples mentioned above can be explicitly understood. Here, we show that the constructed 4-manifolds are diffeomorphic to the 4-sphere; but the potential counterexamples to the other conjectures persist. In particular, we present a new, large family of geometrically motivated balanced presentations of the trivial group. Along the way, we give a classification of fibered, homotopy-ribbon disks bounded by generalized square knots up to isotopy and isotopy rel-boundary. This talk is based on joint work with Alex Zupan.

When can we find perfect matchings in hypergraphs whose vertices represent group elements and whose edges represent solutions to systems of linear equations? A prototypical problem of this type is the Hall-Paige conjecture, which asks for a characterisation of the groups whose multiplication table (viewed as a Latin square) contains a transversal. Other problems expressible in this language include the toroidal n-queens problem, Graham-Sloane harmonious tree-labelling conjecture, Ringel's sequenceability conjecture, Snevily's subsquare conjecture, Tannenbaum's zero-sum conjecture, and many others. All of these problems have a similar flavour, yet until recently they have been approached in completely different ways, using algebraic tools ranging from the combinatorial Nullstellensatz to Fourier analysis. In this talk we discuss a unified approach to attack these problems, using tools from probabilistic combinatorics. In particular, we will see that a suitably randomised version of the Hall-Paige conjecture can be used as a black-box to settle many old problems in the area for sufficiently large groups.  Joint work with Alexey Pokrosvkiy

The classical Hele-Shaw flow describes the motion of incompressible viscous fluid, which occupies part of the space between two parallel, nearby plates. With source and drift, the equation is used in models of tumor growth where cells evolve with contact inhibition, and congested population dynamics. We consider the flow with Hölder continuous source and Lipschitz continuous drift. We show that if the free boundary of the solution is locally close to a Lipschitz graph, then it is indeed Lipschitz, given that the Lipschitz constant is small. This is joint work with Inwon Kim.

Have you ever wanted to marry topology, hyperbolic geometry, and geometric group theory, all at once?* Bowden-Hensel-Webb do this and more when they embark on their study of Diff0(S). In this talk, we will discuss the main theorems of Bowden-Hensel-Webb's paper, the most notable of which is (arguably) the lack of uniform perfection of Diff0(S). We will then summarize the main tools they use to prove these results. (Note: the perspectives on Diff0(S) in this talk will DIFFer greatly from those used in the diffeomorphism groups class.) 

*If you answered "yes" for your personal life as opposed to your academic life: that's ok, I won't judge (if you don't tell me).

I discuss a sharp quantitative stability result for the Sobolev inequality with explicit constants. Moreover, the constants have the optimal behavior in the limit of large dimensions, which allows us to deduce an optimal quantitative stability estimate for the Gaussian log-Sobolev inequality with an explicit dimension-free constant.

The problem of estimation of smooth functionals of unknown parameters of statistical models will be discussed in the cases of high-dimensional log-concave location models (joint work with Martin Wahl) and infinite dimensional Gaussian models with unknown covariance operator. In both cases, the minimax optimal error rates have been obtained in the classes of H\”older smooth functionals with precise dependence on the sample size, the complexity of the parameter (its dimension in the case of log-concave location models or the effective rank of the covariance in the case of Gaussian models)  and on the degree of smoothness of the functionals. These rates are attained for different types of estimators based on two different methods of bias reduction in functional estimation.

We will discuss work of Michael Aizenman, Francois Germinet, Abel Klein, and Simone Warzel from 2007 on optimal Bernoulli decompositions of random variables and applications thereof. We will briefly discuss the basic properties of such decompositions, and demonstrate the existence of decompositions for which the contribution of the Bernoulli disorder is optimized in various ways.

We will then go through a proof of almost sure spectral localization (at the bottom of the spectrum) for continuous random Schroedinger operators with arbitrary bounded disorder. This proof relies on a Bernoulli decomposition of the disorder combined with a slightly stronger variant of the 2005 result from Jean Bourgain and Carlos Kenig showing such localization when the disorder is Bernoulli.

In the minimum eigenvalue problem we are given a collection of rank-1 symmetric matrices, and the goal is to find a subset whose sum has large minimum eigenvalue, subject to some combinatorial constraints. The constraints on which subsets we can select, could be cardinality, partition, or more general matroid base constraints. Using pipage rounding and a matrix concentration inequality, we will show a randomised algorithm which achieves a (1- epsilon) approximation for the minimum eigenvalue problem when the matrices have constant size, subject to any matroid constraint.

The bulk of the talk will be background on “pipage rounding, pessimistic estimators and matrix concentration” adapted from the paper with that title by Nicholas J. A. Harvey and Neil Olver. The application to the minimum eigenvalue problem is joint work with Aditi Laddha and Mohit Singh.

In 1955, Mark Kac introduced a simple model to study the evolution of a gas of particles undergoing pairwise collisions. Although extremely simplified in such a way to be rigorously treatable, the model maintains interesting aspects of gas dynamics. In recent years, we worked with M. Loss and others to extend the analysis to more "realistic" versions of the original model.

I will introduce the Kac model and present some standard and more recent results. These results refer to a system with a fixed number of particles and at fixed kinetic energy (micro canonical ensemble) or temperature (canonical ensemble). I will introduce a "Grand Canonical" version of the Kac system and discuss new results on it.

Legendrian knots are smooth knots which are compatible with an ambient contact structure. They are an essential object of study in contact and symplectic geometry, and many easily posed questions about these knots remain unanswered. In this talk I will introduce Legendrian knots, their properties, some of their invariants. Expect lots of pictures.

Bayesian optimal experimental design (OED) is a principled framework for maximizing information gained from limited data in Bayesian inverse problems. Unfortunately, conventional methods for OED are prohibitive when applied to expensive models with high-dimensional parameters. In this talk, I will present fast and scalable computational methods for large-scale Bayesian OED with infinite-dimensional parameters, including data-informed low-rank approximation, efficient offline-online decomposition, projected neural network approximation, and a new swapping greedy algorithm for combinatorial optimization.

We will discuss the work of Ding-Smart (2019) which showed Anderson localization at the bottom of the spectrum for random discrete Schroedinger operators with arbitrary bounded noise, i.e. without any supposition of regularity of the distribution. In this talk, we will discuss at a high level the basic idea behind a multi-scale analysis, as well as the usual ingredients involved in one: resolvent decay at large scales and the Wegner-type estimate.

We will then discuss the obstacles posed by singular distributions, and the various methods used to overcome these obstacles in various regimes, discussing briefly the transfer matrix method used for d=1 by Carmona-Klein-Martinelli (1987) before examining the unique continuation principles used by Bourgain-Kenig (2005) and the Ding-Smart work which are used in d=2 in the continuum and discrete cases respectively, highlighting the unique challenges arising in the discrete case.

Solitons are particle-like solutions to dispersive evolution equations 
whose shapes persist as time goes by. In some situations, these solitons 
appear due to the balance between nonlinear effects and dispersion, in 
other situations their existence is related to topological properties of 
the model. Broadly speaking, they form the building blocks for the 
long-time dynamics of dispersive equations.

In this talk I will present joint work with W. Schlag on long-time decay 
estimates for co-dimension one type perturbations of the soliton for the 
1D focusing cubic Klein-Gordon equation (up to exponential time scales), 
and I will discuss our previous work on the asymptotic stability of the 
sine-Gordon kink under odd perturbations. While these two problems are 
quite similar at first sight, we will see that they differ by a subtle 
cancellation property, which has significant consequences for the 
long-time dynamics of the perturbations of the respective solitons.

The edge-coloring problem (ECP) for a multigraph $G=(V, E)$ is to color its edges with minimum number of colors such that no two adjacent vertices receive the same color. ECP can be naturally formulated as an integer program, and its linear programming relaxation is referred to as the fractional edge-coloring problem (FECP). The optimal value of ECP (resp. FECP) is called the chromatic index (resp. fractional chromatic index) of $G$, denoted by $\chi^{\prime}(G)$ (resp. $\chi^*(G)$). Let $\Delta(G)$ be the maximum degree of $G$ and let $ \mathcal{W}^*(G) $ be the fractional density of $G$, defined by $$ \mathcal{W}^*(G) = \max _{U \subseteq V,|U| \geq 2}\frac{|E(U)|}{\lfloor|U|/2\rfloor}. $$ Seymour showed that $\chi^*(G)=\max \{\Delta(G), \mathcal{W}^*(G)\}$. Moreover, the Goldberg-Seymour Conjecture is confirmed Chen, Jing, and Zang states that $\chi^{\prime}(G) \leq \max \{\Delta(G)+1,\lceil\mathcal{W}^*(G)\rceil\}$. Chen, Zang and Zhao developed an algorithm that calculates $ \mathcal{W}^*(G) $ in strongly polynomial time. Inspired by their results, we consider the fractional $ f $-edge-coloring problem ($ f $-FECP) for a given function $ f:V\to \mathbb N_+ $, which is a generalization of FECP: each spanning subgraph induced by a color class has degree at most $ f(v) $ at each vertex $ v\in V $. We give a strongly polynomial-time algorithm for calculating the corresponding fractional $ f $-density $$ \mathcal{W}^*_{f}(G)=\max _{U \subseteq V,|U| \geq 2}\frac{|E(U)|}{\lfloor f(U) / 2\rfloor}. $$

This talk will be about connections between spectral problems for canonical systems and non-linear Fourier transforms (NLFTs). Non-linear Fourier transform is closely connected to Dirac systems, which form a subclass of canonical systems of differential equations. This connection allows one to find analogs of results on inverse spectral problems for canonical systems in the area of NLFT. In particular, NLFTs of discrete sequences, discussed in the lecture notes by Tao and Thiele, are related to spectral problems for periodic measures and the theory of orthogonal polynomials.

I will start the talk with the basics of non-linear Fourier transforms, then connect NLFTs to canonical systems. Then I will present an explicit algorithm for inverse spectral problems developed by Makarov and Poltoratski for locally-finite periodic spectral measures, as well as an extension of their work to certain classes of non-periodic spectral measures. Finally I will return to NLFT and translate the results for inverse spectral problems to results for NLFT.

The Anderson tight binding model describes an electron moving in a disordered material. Such models are, depending on various parameters of the system, either expected to or known to display a phenomenon known as Anderson localization, in which this disorder can "trap" electrons. Different versions of this phenomenon can be characterized spectrally or locally. We will review both the dominant methods and some of the foundational results in the study of these systems in arbitrary dimension, before shifting our focus to aspects of the one-dimensional theory.

 

Specifically, we will examine the transfer matrix method, which allows us to leverage the Furstenberg theory of random matrix products to understand the asymptotics of generalized eigenfunctions. From this, we will briefly sketch a proof of localization given originally in Jitomirskaya-Zhu (2019). Finally, we will discuss recent work of the speaker combining the argument in Jitomirskaya-Zhu with certain probabilistic results to prove localization for a broader class of models.

In this continuing joint work with Benjamin Arras, we explore connections between covariance representations and Stein's method. In particular,  via Stein's kernels we obtain quantitative high-dimensional CLTs in 1-Wasserstein distance when the limiting Gaussian probability measure is anisotropic. The dependency on the parameters is completely explicit and the rates of convergence are sharp.

We'll begin with a primer on hyperbolic and stable polynomials, which have been popular in recent years due to their many surprising appearances in combinatorics and algebra. We will cover a sketch of the famous Branden Borcea characterization of univariate stability preservers in the first part of the talk. We will then discuss more our recent work on multivariate hyperbolic polynomials which are invariant under permutations of their variables and connections to this Branden Borcea characterization.

Zoom Link: https://gatech.zoom.us/j/99596774152

We give a polynomial-time algorithm for online covering IPs with a competitive ratio of O(\log mn) when the constraints are revealed in random order, essentially matching the best possible offline bound of \Omega(\log n) and circumventing the \Omega(\log m \log n) lower bound known in adversarial order. We then leverage this O(\log mn)-competitive algorithm to solve this problem in the prophet setting, where constraints are sampled from a sequence of known distributions. Our reduction in fact relies only on samples from these distributions, in a manner evocative of prior work on single-sample prophet inequalities for online packing problems. We present sample guarantees in the prophet setting, as well as in the setting where random samples from an adversarial instance are revealed at the outset.

This talk is based on joint work with Anupam Gupta and Roie Levin, part of which appeared at FOCS 2021. 

Lefschetz fibrations are very useful in the sense that they have one-one correspondence with the relations in the Mapping Class Groups and they can be used to construct exotic (homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic) 4-manifolds. In this series of talks, we will first introduce Lefschetz fibrations and Mapping Class Groups and give examples. Then, we will dive more into 4-manifold world. More specifically, we will talk about the history of  exotic 4-manifolds and we will define the nice tools used to construct exotic 4-manifolds, like symplectic normal connect sum, Rational Blow-Down, Luttinger Surgery, Branch Covers, and Knot Surgery. Finally, we will provide various constructions of exotic 4-manifolds.

In embryonic development, formation of blood vessels in the retina of the eye is critically dependent on prior establishment of a mesh of astrocytes.  Astrocytes emerge from the optic nerve head and then migrate over the retinal surface in a radially symmetric manner and mature through differentiation.  We develop a PDE model describing the migration and differentiation of astrocytes and study the appropriateness of the model equation components that combines approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) and sensitivity analysis (SA). Comparing numerical simulations to experimental data, we identify model components that can be removed via model reduction using ABC+SA.

https://gatech.zoom.us/j/91390791493?pwd=QnpaWHNEOHZTVXlZSXFkYTJ0b0Q0UT09

Conservation laws and Lyapunov functions are powerful tools for proving the global existence or stability of solutions to PDEs, but for most complex systems these tools are insufficient to completely understand non-perturbative dynamics. In this talk I will discuss a complex-scalar PDE which may be seen as a toy model for vortex stretching in fluid flow, and cannot be neatly categorized as conservative nor dissipative.

In a recent series of papers, we have shown (using computer-assisted-proofs) that this equation exhibits rich dynamical behavior existing globally in time: non-trivial equilibria, homoclinic orbits, heteroclinic orbits, and integrable subsystems foliated by periodic orbits. On the other side of the coin, we show several mechanisms by which solutions can blowup.

A translation surface is obtained by identifying edges of polygons in the plane to create a compact Riemann surface equipped with a nonzero holomorphic one-form. Every Riemann surface can be given as an algebraic curve via its Jacobian variety. We aim to construct explicitly the underlying algebraic curves from their translation surfaces, given as polygons in the plane. The key tools in our approach are discrete Riemann surfaces, which allow us to approximate the Riemann matrices, and then, via theta functions, the equations of the curves. In this talk, I will present our algorithm and numerical experiments. From the newly found Riemann matrices and equations of curves, we can then make several conjectures about the curves underlying the Jenkins-Strebel representatives, a family of examples that until now, lived squarely on the analytic side of the transcendental divide between Riemann surfaces and algebraic curves.

In this talk, we obtain new computational insights into two classical areas of statistics: generalization and sampling. In the first part, we study generalization: the performance of a learning algorithm on unseen data. We define a notion of generalization for non-converging training with local descent approaches via the stability of loss statistics. This notion yields generalization bounds in a similar manner to classical algorithmic stability. Then, we show that more information from the training dynamics provides clues to generalization performance.   

In the second part, we discuss a new method for constructing transport maps. Transport maps are transformations between the sample space of a source (which is generally easy to sample) and a target (typically non-Gaussian) probability distribution. The new construction arises from an infinite-dimensional generalization of a Newton method to find the zero of a "score operator". We define such a score operator that gives the difference of the score -- gradient of logarithm of density -- of a transported distribution from the target score. The new construction is iterative, enjoys fast convergence under smoothness assumptions, and does not make a parametric ansatz on the transport map.

The classical braid groups can be viewed from many different angles and admit generalizations in just as many directions. Surface braid groups are a topological generalization of the braid groups that have close connections with mapping class groups of surfaces. In this talk we review a recent result on minimal nonabelian finite quotients of braid groups. In considering the analogous problem for surface braid groups, we construct nilpotent nonabelian quotients by generalizing the Heisenberg group. These Heisenberg quotients do not arise as quotients of the braid group.

We will talk about our results on the elasticity and stability of the 
collision of two kinks with low speed v>0 for the nonlinear wave 
equation of dimension 1+1 known as the phi^6 model. We will show that 
the collision of the two solitons is "almost" elastic and that, after 
the collision, the size of the energy norm of the remainder and the size 
of the defect of the speed of each soliton can be, for any k>0, of the 
order of any monomial v^{k} if v is small enough.

References:
This talk is based on our current works:
On the collision problem of two kinks for the phi^6 model with low speed 
   [https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.09749]
Approximate kink-kink solutions for the phi^6 model in the low-speed 
limit [https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.09714]

We show that Erdős-Renyi random graph with constant density has correspondence chromatic number $O(n/\sqrt{\log n})$; this matches a prediction from linear Hadwiger’s conjecture for correspondence colouring. The proof follows from a sufficient condition for correspondence colourability in terms of the numbers of independent sets, following Bernshteyn's method. We conjecture the truth to be of order $O(n/\log n)$ as suggested by the random correspondence assignment. This is joint work with Zdenek Dvorak.

We study $L^p$ bounds on Nikodym maximal functions associated to spheres. In contrast to the spherical maximal functions studied by Stein and Bourgain, our maximal functions are uncentered: for each point in $\mathbb R^n$, we take the supremum over a family of spheres containing that point. This is joint work with Georgios Dosidis and Jongchon Kim.

When do commuting homeomorphisms of S^2 have a common fixed point? Christian Bonatti gave the first sufficient condition: Commuting diffeomorphisms sufficiently close to the identity in Diff^+(S^2) always admit a common fixed point. In this talk we present a result of Michael Handel that extends Bonatti's condition to a much larger class of commuting homeomorphisms. If time permits, we survey results for higher genus surfaces due to Michael Handel and Morris Hirsch, and connections to certain compact foliated 4-manifolds.

We describe a geometric framework to study Newton's
equations on infinite-dimensional configuration spaces of
diffeomorphisms and smooth probability densities. It turns out that
several important PDEs of hydrodynamical origin can be described in
this framework in a natural way. In particular, the so-called Madelung
transform between the Schrödinger-type equations on wave functions and
Newton's equations on densities turns out to be a Kähler map between
the corresponding phase spaces, equipped with the Fubini-Study and
Fisher-Rao information metrics. This is a joint work with G.Misiolek
and K.Modin.

 I will discuss the soliton resolution and asymptotic stability problems for the sine-Gordon equation. It is known that the obstruction to the asymptotic stability for the sine-Gordon equation in the energy space is the existence of small breathers which is also closely related to the emergence of wobbling kinks. Our stability analysis gives a criterion for the weight which is sharp up to the endpoint so that the asymptotic stability holds. This is joint work with Jiaqi Liu and Bingying Lu.

Zoom link to the talk: https://gatech.zoom.us/j/91558578481

In this talk, we will consider stochastic processes on (random) graphs. They arise naturally in epidemiology, statistical physics, computer science and engineering disciplines. In this set-up, the vertices are endowed with a local state (e.g., immunological status in case of an epidemic process, opinion about a social situation). The local state changes dynamically as the vertex interacts with its neighbours. The interaction rules and the graph structure depend on the application-specific context. We will discuss (non-equilibrium) approximation methods for those systems as the number of vertices grow large. In particular, we will discuss three different approximations in this talk: i) approximate lumpability of Markov processes based on local symmetries (local automorphisms) of the graph, ii) functional laws of large numbers in the form of ordinary and partial differential equations, and iii) functional central limit theorems in the form of Gaussian semi-martingales. We will also briefly discuss how those approximations could be used for practical purposes, such as parameter inference from real epidemic data (e.g., COVID-19 in Ohio), designing efficient simulation algorithms etc.

We will continue our discussion of the key ingredients of a multi-scale analysis, namely resolvent decay and the Wegner type estimate. After briefly discussing how the Wegner estimate is obtained in the regime of regular noise, we will discuss the strategy used in Bourgain-Kenig (2005) and Ding-Smart (2018) to obtain analogues thereof using some form of unique continuation principle.

From here, we'll examine the quantitative unique continuation principle used by Bourgain-Kenig, and the lack of any even qualitative analogue on the two-dimensional lattice. From here, we'll discuss the quantitative probabilistic unique continuation result used in Ding-Smart.

A line arrangement is a collection of lines in the projective plane.  The intersection lattice of the line arrangement is the set of all lines and their intersections, ordered with respect to reverse inclusion.  A line arrangement is called free if the Jacobian ideal of the line arrangement is saturated.  The underlying motivation for this talk is a conjecture of Terao which says that whether a line arrangement is free can be detected from its intersection lattice.  This raises a question - in what ways does the saturation of the Jacobian ideal depend on the geometry of the lines and not just the intersection lattice?  A main objective of the talk is to introduce planar rigidity theory and show that 'infinitesimal rigidity' is a property of line arrangements which is not detected by the intersection lattice, but contributes in a very precise way to the saturation of the Jacobian ideal.  This connection builds a theory around a well-known example of Ziegler.  This is joint work with Jessica Sidman (Mt. Holyoke College) and Will Traves (Naval Academy).

We study the problem of designing a robust parameter-independent feedback control input that steers, with minimum energy, the average of a linear system submitted to parameter perturbations where the states are initialized and finalized according to a given initial and final distribution. We formulate this problem as an optimal transport problem, where the transport cost of an initial and final state is the minimum energy of the ensemble of linear systems that have started from the initial state and the average of the ensemble of states at the final time is the final state. The by-product of this formulation is that using tools from optimal transport, we are able to design a robust parameter-independent feedback control with minimum energy for the ensemble of uncertain linear systems. This relies on the existence of a transport map which we characterize as the gradient of a convex function.

Every knot in S^3 bounds a PL (piecewise-linear) disk in the four ball. But this is no longer true for knots in other three manifolds, as demonstrated first by Akbulut, who constructed a knot which does not bound any PL disk in a specific contractible four manifold. Then Levine showed that there exist knots that do not bound a PL disk in any homology four ball. What happens if we relax the condition of bounding PL disk to bounding a PL surface with some given genus? I will discuss the joint work with Hom and Stoffregen, where we proved that for each n, there exists a knot K_n in an integer homology sphere that does not bound a PL surface of genus n in any homology four ball. This talk is meant to be accessible to a broad audience.  

I will discuss the linear stability of weakly charged and slowly rotating Kerr-Newman black holes under coupled gravitational and electromagnetic perturbations. We show that the solutions to the linearized Einstein-Maxwell equations decay at an inverse polynomial rate to a linearized Kerr-Newman solution plus a pure gauge term. The proof uses tools from microlocal analysis and a detailed description of the resolvent of the Fourier transformed linearized Einstein-Maxwell operator at low frequencies.

A \emph{list assignment} $L$ gives to each vertex $v$ in a graph $G$ a
list $L(v)$ of
allowable colors.  An \emph{$L$-coloring} is a proper coloring $\varphi$ such that
$\varphi(v)\in L(v)$ for all $v\in V(G)$.  An \emph{$L$-recoloring move} transforms
one $L$-coloring to another by changing the color of a single vertex.  An
\emph{$L$-recoloring sequence} is a sequence of $L$-recoloring moves.  We study
the problem of which hypotheses on $G$ and $L$ imply that for that every pair
$\varphi_1$ and $\varphi_2$ of $L$-colorings of $G$ there exists an $L$-recoloring
sequence that transforms $\varphi_1$ into $\varphi_2$.  Further, we study bounds on
the length of a shortest such $L$-recoloring sequence.

We will begin with a survey of recoloring and list recoloring problems (no prior
background is assumed) and end with some recent results and compelling
conjectures.  This is joint work with Stijn Cambie and Wouter Cames van
Batenburg.

A meromorphic inner function is a bounded analytic function on the upper half plane with unit modulus almost everywhere on the real line and a meromorphic continuation to the complex plane. Meromorphic inner functions and equivalently meromorphic Herglotz functions play a central role in inverse spectral theory of differential operators. In this talk, I will discuss some uniqueness problems for meromorphic inner functions and their applications to inverse spectral theory of canonical Hamiltonian systems as Borg-Marchenko type results.

The pants complex of a surface has as its 0-cells the pants decompositions of a surface and as its 1-cells some elementary moves relating two pants decompositions; the 2-cells are disks glued along certain cycles in the 1-skeleton of the complex. In "Pants Decompositions of Surfaces," Hatcher proves that this complex is contractible.

 During this interactive talk, we will aim to understand the structure of the pants complex and some of the important tools that Hatcher uses in his proof of contractibility.

We study the locations of complex zeroes of independence polynomials of bounded degree hypergraphs. For graphs, this is a long-studied subject with applications to statistical physics, algorithms, and combinatorics. Results on zero-free regions for bounded-degree graphs include Shearer's result on the optimal zero-free disk, along with several recent results on other zero-free regions. Much less is known for hypergraphs. We make some steps towards an understanding of zero-free regions for bounded-degree hypergaphs by proving that all hypergraphs of maximum degree $\Delta$ have a zero-free disk almost as large as the optimal disk for graphs of maximum degree $\Delta$ established by Shearer (of radius $\sim1/(e\Delta)$). Up to logarithmic factors in $\Delta$ this is optimal, even for hypergraphs with all edge-sizes strictly greater than $2$. We conjecture that for $k\geq 3$, there exist families of $k$-uniform linear hypergraphs that have a much larger zero-free disk of radius $\Omega(\Delta^{-1/(k-1)})$. We establish this in the case of linear hypertrees. Joint work with David Galvin, Gwen McKinley, Will Perkins and Prasad Tetali.

I will give a hopefully accessible introduction to some work on
tropical moduli spaces of curves and abelian varieties. I will report
on joint work with Madeline Brandt, Juliette Bruce, Margarida Melo,
Gwyneth Moreland, and Corey Wolfe, in which we find new rational
cohomology classes in the moduli space A_g of abelian varieties using
tropical techniques. And I will try to touch on a new point of view on
this topic, namely that of differential forms on tropical moduli
spaces, following the work of Francis Brown.

We shall discuss the quantum dynamics associated with ergodic
Schroedinger operators with singular continuous spectrum. Upper bounds
on the transport moments have been obtained for several classes of
one-dimensional operators, particularly, by Damanik--Tcheremchantsev,
Jitomirskaya--Liu, Jitomirskaya--Powell. We shall present a new method
which allows to recover most of the previous results and also to
obtain new results in one and higher dimensions. The input required to
apply the method is a large-deviation estimate on the Green function
at a single energy. Based on joint work with S. Sodin.

The talk will be online at https://gatech.zoom.us/j/96285037913

In his seminal 1991 paper, Thomas M. Cover introduced a simple and elegant mathematical model for trading on the stock market. This model, which later on came to be known as  online portfolio selection (OPS), is specified with only two integer parameters: the number of assets $d$ and time horizon $T$. In each round $t \in \{1, ..., T\}$, the trader selects a  portfolio--distribution $p_t \in R^d_+$ of the current capital over the set of $d$ assets; after this, the adversary generates a nonnegative vector $r_t \in R^d_+$ of returns (relative prices of assets), and the trader's capital is multiplied by the "aggregated return'' $\langle p_{t}, r_{t} \rangle$. Despite its apparent simplicity, this model captures the two key properties of the stock market: (i) it "plays against'' the trader; (ii) money accumulates multiplicatively. In the 30 years that followed, the OPS model has received a great deal of attention from the learning theory, information theory, and quantitative finance communities.

In the same paper, Cover also proposed an algorithm, termed Universal Portfolios, that admitted a strong performance guarantee: the regret of $O(d \log (T))$ against the best portfolio in hindsight, and without any restrictions of returns or portfolios. This guarantee was later on shown to be worst-case optimal, and no other algorithm attaining it has been found to date. Unfortunately, exact computation of a universal portfolio amounts to averaging over a log-concave distribution, which is a challenging task. Addressing this, Kalai and Vempala (2002) achieved the running time of $O(d^4 T^{14})$ per round via log-concave sampling techniques. However, with such a running time essentially prohibiting all but "toy'' problems--yet remaining state-of-the-art--the problem of finding an optimal and practical OPS algorithm was left open.

In this talk, after discussing some of the arising challenges, I shall present a fast and optimal OPS algorithm proposed in a recent work with R. Jezequel and P. Gaillard (arXiv:2209.13932). Our algorithm combines regret optimality with the runtime of $O(d^2 T)$, thus dramatically improving state of the art. As we shall see, the motivation and analysis of the proposed algorithm are closely related to establishing a sharp bound on the accuracy of the Laplace approximation for a log-concave distribution with a polyhedral support, which is a result of independent interest.

Zoom link to the talk: https://gatech.zoom.us/j/98280978183

Continuing from where we left off, we will go through the proof of the probabilistic unique continuation result in Ding-Smart (2018) for solutions of the eigenequation on large finite boxes in the two-dimensional lattice. We'll briefly discuss the free sites formalism necessary to carry out the multiscale analysis as well, before going through technical lemmas concerning bounds on solutions to our eigenequation on large finite rectangles in the lattice as they propagate from a boundary.

Lefschetz fibrations are very useful in the sense that they have one-one correspondence with the relations in the Mapping Class Groups and they can be used to construct exotic (homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic) 4-manifolds. In this series of talks, we will first introduce Lefschetz fibrations and Mapping Class Groups and give examples. Then, we will dive more into 4-manifold world. More specifically, we will talk about the history of  exotic 4-manifolds and we will define the nice tools used to construct exotic 4-manifolds, like symplectic normal connect sum, Rational Blow-Down, Luttinger Surgery, Branch Covers, and Knot Surgery. Finally, we will provide various constructions of exotic 4-manifolds.

https://gatech.zoom.us/j/98358157136 

Analyzing when noisy trajectories, in the two dimensional plane, of a stochastic dynamical system exit the basin of attraction of a fixed point is specifically challenging when a periodic orbit forms the boundary of the basin of attraction. Our contention is that there is a distinguished Most Probable Escape Path (MPEP) crossing the periodic orbit which acts as a guide for noisy escaping paths in the case of small noise slightly away from the limit of vanishing noise. It is well known that, before exiting, noisy trajectories will tend to cycle around the periodic orbit as the noise vanishes, but we observe that the escaping paths are stubbornly resistant to cycling as soon as the noise becomes at all significant. Using a geometric dynamical systems approach, we isolate a subset of the unstable manifold of the fixed point in the Euler-Lagrange system, which we call the River.  Using the Maslov index we identify a subset of the River which is comprised of local minimizers.  The Onsager-Machlup (OM) functional, which is treated as a perturbation of the Friedlin-Wentzell functional, provides a selection mechanism to pick out a specific MPEP. Much of the talk is focused on the system obtained by reversing the van der Pol Equations in time (so-called IVDP). Through Monte-Carlo simulations, we show that the prediction provided by OM-selected MPEP matches closely the escape hatch chosen by noisy trajectories at a certain level of small noise.

Waves are ubiquitous in nature. Some wave phenomena are conspicuous, most notably in elastic objects, and in bodies of water. In electro-dynamics, quantum mechanics, and gravity, waves play a fundamental role but are much more difficult to find. Over the past centuries, major scientific breakthroughs have been associated with the discovery of hidden wave phenomena in nature. Engineering has enabled our modern information based society by developing sophisticated methods which allow us to harness wave propagation. Seismic exploration relies on wave scattering in the discovery of natural resources. Medicine depends heavily on wave-based imaging technology such as MRI and CAT scans.

Mathematics has played a major role in the understanding of wave propagation, and its many intricate phenomena including reflection, diffraction, and refraction. In its most basic form, the wave equation is a linear partial differential equation (PDE). However, modern science and engineering rely heavily on nonlinear PDEs which can exhibit many surprising and delicate properties. Mathematical analysis continues to evolve rapidly driven in part by the many open questions surrounding nonlinear PDEs and their solutions. This talk will survey some of the mathematics involved in our understanding of waves, both linear and nonlinear.

Macdonald polynomials are a family of symmetric functions that are known to have remarkable connections to a well-studied particle model called the asymmetric simple exclusion process (ASEP). The modified Macdonald polynomials are obtained from the classical Macdonald polynomials using an operation called plethysm. It is natural to ask whether the modified Macdonald polynomials specialize to the partition function of some other particle system.

We answer this question in the affirmative with a certain multispecies totally asymmetric zero-range process (TAZRP). This link motivated a new tableaux formula for modified Macdonald polynomials. We present a Markov process on those tableaux that projects to the TAZRP and derive formulas for stationary probabilities and certain correlations, proving a remarkable symmetry property. This talk is based on joint work with Arvind Ayyer and James Martin.

The study of representations of fundamental groups of surfaces into Lie groups is captured by the character variety. One main tool to study character varieties are Higgs bundles, a complex geometric tool. They fail to see the mapping class group symmetry. I will present an alternative approach which replaces Higgs bundles by so-called higher complex structures, given in terms of commuting nilpotent matrices. The resulting theory has many similarities to the non-abelian Hodge theory. Joint with Georgios Kydonakis and Charlie Reid.

Recent advances in data-driven modeling approaches have proven highly successful in a wide range of fields in science and engineering. In this talk, I will briefly discuss several ubiquitous challenges with the conventional model development / discretization / parameter inference / model revision loop that our methodology attempts to address. I will present our weak form methodology which has proven to have surprising performance properties. In particular, I will describe our equation learning (WSINDy) and parameter estimation (WENDy) algorithms.  Lastly, I will discuss applications to several benchmark problems illustrating how our approach addresses several of the above issues and offers advantages in terms of computational efficiency, noise robustness, and modest data needs (in an online learning context).

 In the 1950s Phil Anderson made a prediction about the effect of random impurities on the conductivity properties of a crystal. Mathematically, these questions amount to the study of solutions of differential or difference equations and the associated spectral theory of self-adjoint operators obtained from an ergodic process. With the arrival of quasicrystals, in addition to random models, nonrandom lattice models such as those generated by irrational rotations or skew-rotations on tori have been studied over the past 30 years. 

By now, an extensive mathematical theory has developed around Anderson’s predictions, with several questions remaining open. This talk will attempt to survey certain aspects of the field, with an emphasis on the theory of SL(2,R) cocycles with an irrational or  Diophantine  rotation on the circle as base dynamics. In this setting, Artur Avila discovered about a decade ago that the Lyapunov exponent is piecewise affine in the imaginary direction after complexification of the circle. In fact, the slopes of these affine functions are integer valued. This is easy to see in the uniformly hyperbolic case, which is equivalent to energies falling into the gaps of the spectrum, due to the winding number of the complexified Lyapunov exponent. Remarkably, this property persists also in the non-uniformly hyperbolic case, i.e., on the spectrum of the Schrödinger operator. This requires a delicate continuity property of the Lyapunov exponent in both energy and frequency. Avila built his global theory (Acta Math. 2015) on this quantization property. I will present some recent results with Rui HAN (Louisiana) connecting Avila’s notion of  acceleration (the slope of the complexified Lyapunov exponent in the imaginary direction) to the number of zeros of the determinants of  finite volume Hamiltonians relative to the complex toral variable. This connection allows one to answer questions arising in the supercritical case of Avila’s global theory concerning the measure of the second stratum, Anderson localization on this stratum, as well as settle a conjecture on the Hölder regularity of the integrated density of states.

The Intermediate Long Wave equation (ILW) describes long internal gravity waves in stratified fluids. As the depth parameter in the equation approaches zero or infinity, the ILW formally approaches the Kortweg-deVries equation (KdV) or the Benjamin-Ono equation (BO), respectively. Kodama, Ablowitz and Satsuma discovered the formal complete integrability of ILW and formulated inverse scattering transform solutions. If made rigorous, the inverse scattering method will provide powerful tools for asymptotic analysis of ILW. In this talk, I will present some recent results on the ILW direct scattering problem. In particular, a Lax pair formulation is clarified, and the spectral theory of the Lax operators can be studied. Existence and uniqueness of scattering states are established for small interaction potential. The scattering matrix can then be constructed from the scattering states. The solution is related to the theory of analytic functions on a strip. This is joint work with Peter Perry.

In this talk we discuss our proof of a recent conjecture of Guo and Poznanovi\'{c} concerning chains in certain 01-fillings of moon polyominoes. A key ingredient of our proof is a correspondence between words $w$ and pairs $(\mathcal{W}(w), \mathcal{M}(w))$ of increasing tableaux such that $\mathcal{M}(w)$ determines the lengths of the longest strictly increasing and strictly decreasing sequences in every subinterval of $w$.  (It will be noted that similar and well-studied correspondences like RSK insertion and Hecke insertion fail in this regard.) To define our correspondence we make use of Thomas and Yong's K-infusion operator and then use it to obtain the bijections that prove the conjecture of Guo and Poznanovi\'{c}.    (Joint work with D. Saracino.)

Given a discrete set $\Lambda\subseteq\mathbb{R}$ and an interval $I$, define the sequence of complex exponentials in $L^2(I)$, $\mathcal{E}(\Lambda)$, by $\{e^{2\pi i\lambda t}\colon \lambda\in\Lambda\}$.  A fundamental result in harmonic analysis says that if $\mathcal{E}(\frac{1}{b}\mathbb{Z})$ is an orthogonal basis for $L^2(I)$ for any interval $I$ of length $b$.  It is also well-known that there exist sets $\Lambda$, which may be irregular, such that sets $\mathcal{E}(\Lambda)$ form nonorthogonal bases (known as Riesz bases) for $L^2(S)$, for $S\subseteq\mathbb{R}$ not necessarily an interval.

Given $\mathcal{E}(\Lambda)$ that forms a Riesz basis for $L^2[0,1]$ and some 0 < a < 1, Avdonin showed that there exists $\Lambda'\subseteq \Lambda$ such that $\mathcal{E}(\Lambda')$ is a Riesz basis for $L^2[0,a]$ (called basis extraction).  Lyubarskii and Seip showed that this can be done in such a way that $\mathcal{E}(\Lambda \setminus \Lambda')$ is also a Riesz basis for $L^2[a,1]$ (called basis splitting).  The celebrated result of Kozma and Nitzan shows that one can extract a Riesz basis for $L^2(S)$ from $\mathcal{E}(\mathbb{Z})$ where $S$ is a union of disjoint subintervals of $[0,1]$.

In this talk we construct sets $\Lambda_I\subseteq\mathbb{Z}$ such that the $\mathcal{E}(\Lambda_I)$ form Riesz bases for $L^2(I)$ for corresponding intervals $I$, with the added compatibility property that unions of the sets $\Lambda_I$ generate Riesz bases for unions of the corresponding intervals.  The proof of our result uses an interesting assortment of tools from analysis, probability, and number theory.  We will give details of the proof in the talk, together with examples and a discussion of recent developments.  The work discussed is joint with Shauna Revay (GMU and Accenture Federal Services (AFS)), and Goetz Pfander (Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt).

The braid group (which encodes the braiding of n strands) has a canonical projection to the symmetric group (recording where the ends of the strands go). We ask the question: what are the extensions of the symmetric group by abelian groups that arise as quotients of the braid group, by a refinement of this canonical projection? To answer this question, we study a particular twisted coefficient system for the symmetric group, called the integral pair module. In this module, we find the maximal submodule in each commensurability class. We find the cohomology classes characterizing each such extension, and for context, we describe the second cohomology group of the symmetric group with coefficients in the most interesting of these modules. This is joint work with Trevor Nakamura.

 We report on recent results regarding the limiting absorption principle for multi-dimensional, massless Dirac-type operators (implying absence of singularly continuous spectrum) and continuity properties of the associated spectral shift function.

We will motivate our interest in this circle of ideas by briefly describing the connection to the notion of the Witten index for a certain class of non-Fredholm operators.

This is based on various joint work with A. Carey, J. Kaad, G. Levitina, R. Nichols, D. Potapov, F. Sukochev, and D. Zanin.

The Fermi variety plays a crucial role in the study of    periodic operators.  In this talk, I will  first discuss recent works on the irreducibility of  the Fermi variety  for discrete periodic Schr\"odinger  operators.   I will then  discuss the applications to  solve  problems of embedded eigenvalues, isospectrality and quantum ergodicity. 

The celebrated Hajnal-Szemerédi theorem gives best possible minimum degree conditions for clique-factors in graphs. There have been some recent variants of this result into several settings, each of which has some sort of randomness come into play. We will give a survey on these problems and the recent developments.

The estimation of distributions of complex objects from high-dimensional data with low-dimensional structures is an important topic in statistics and machine learning. Deep generative models achieve this by encoding and decoding data to generate synthetic realistic images and texts. A key aspect of these models is the extraction of low-dimensional latent features, assuming data lies on a low-dimensional manifold. We study this by developing a minimax framework for distribution estimation on unknown submanifolds with smoothness assumptions on the target distribution and the manifold. The framework highlights how problem characteristics, such as intrinsic dimensionality and smoothness, impact the limits of high-dimensional distribution estimation. Our estimator, which is a mixture of locally fitted generative models, is motivated by differential geometry techniques and covers cases where the data manifold lacks a global parametrization. 

We will prove the key lemma underlying the probabilistic unique continuation result of Ding-Smart, namely that for "thin" tilted rectangles, boundedness on all of one of the long edges and on a 1-\varepsilon proportion of the opposite long edge implies a bound (in terms of the dimensions of the rectangle) on the whole rectangle (with high probability). 

A link of an isolated complex surface singularity is the intersection of the surface with a small sphere centered at the singular point. The link is a smooth 3-manifold that carries a natural contact structure (given by complex tangencies); one might then want to study its symplectic or Stein fillings. A special family of Stein fillings, called Milnor fillings, can be obtained by smoothing the singular point of the original complex surface.  We will discuss some properties and constructions of Milnor fillings and general Stein fillings, and ways to detect whether the link of singularity has Stein fillings that do not arise from smoothings.

We study the minimum number of paths needed to express the edge set of a given graph as the symmetric difference of the edge sets of the paths. This can be seen as a weakening of Gallai’s path decomposition problem, and a variant of the “odd cover” problem of Babai and Frankl which asks for the minimum number of complete bipartite graphs whose symmetric difference gives the complete graph. We relate this “path odd-cover” number of a graph to other known graph parameters and prove some bounds. Joint work with Steffen Borgwardt, Calum Buchanan, Eric Culver, Bryce Frederickson, and Puck Rombach.

https://gatech.zoom.us/j/91390791493?pwd=QnpaWHNEOHZTVXlZSXFkYTJ0b0Q0UT09

G. W. Hill made major contributions to Celestial Mechanics. One of them is to develop his lunar theory as an alternative approach for the study of the motion of the Moon around the Earth, which is the classical Lunar Hill problem. The mathematical model we study is one of the extensions of the classical Hill approximation of the restricted three-body problem. Considering a restricted four body problem, with a hierarchy between the bodies: two larger bodies, a smaller one and a fourth infinitesimal body, we encounter the shapes of the three heavy bodies via oblateness. We first find that the triangular central configurations of the three heavy bodies is a scalene triangle. Through the application of the Hill approximation, we obtain the limiting Hamiltonian that describes the dynamics of the infinitesimal body in a neighborhood of the smaller body. As a motivating example, we identify the three heavy bodies with the Sun, Jupiter and the Jupiter’s Trojan asteroid Hektor. 

The Deligne category of symmetric groups is the additive Karoubi closure of the partition category. The partition category may be interpreted, following Comes, via a particular linearization of the category of two-dimensional oriented cobordisms. In this talk we will use a generalization of this approach to the Deligne category coupled with the universal construction of two-dimensional topological theories to construct their multi-parameter monoidal generalizations, one for each rational function in one variable. This talk is based on joint work with M. Khovanov.

Mathapalooza! is back at this year's Atlanta Science Festival! Come join us on Saturday, March 18, for an afternoon of mathematical fun beginning at 1:00pm at the Paideia School.  There will be interactive puzzles and games, artwork, music, stage acts, and mathematics in motion.

We will finish our proof of the key lemma for the probabilistic unique continuation principle used in Ding-Smart. We will also briefly recall enough of the theory of martingales to clarify a use of Azuma's inequality, and the basic definitions of \epsilon-nets and \epsilon-packings required to formulate the basic volumetric bound for these in e.g. the unit sphere, before using these to complete the proof.

A fundamental conjecture of tight closure theory is every weakly F-regular ring is strongly F -regular. There has been incremental progress on this conjecture since the inception of tight closure. Most notably, the conjecture has been resolved for rings graded over a field by Lyubeznik and Smith. Otherwise, known progress around the conjecture have required assumptions on the ring that are akin to being Gorenstein. We extend known cases by proving the equivalence of F -regularity classes for rings whose anti-canonical algebra is Noetherian on the punctured spectrum. The anti-canonical algebra being Noetherian for a strongly F -regular ring is conjectured to be a vacuous assumption. This talk is based on joint work with Ian Aberbach and Craig Huneke.

In this talk, we will explore and make comparisons between various models that exist for spherical tensor categories associated to the category of representations of the quantum group U_q(SL_n). In particular, we will discuss the combinatorial model of Murakami-Ohtsuki-Yamada (MOY), the n-valent ribbon model of Sikora and the trivalent spider category of Cautis-Kamnitzer-Morrison (CKM). We conclude by showing that the full subcategory of the spider category from CKM, whose objects are monoidally generated by the standard representation and its dual, is equivalent as a spherical braided category to Sikora's quotient category. This proves a conjecture of Le and Sikora and also answers a question from Morrison's Ph.D. thesis.

In this talk, we demonstrate the application of Neural Networks with Locally Converging Inputs (NNLCI) to simulate the scattering of electromagnetic waves around two-dimensional perfect electric conductors (PEC). The NNLCIs are designed to output high-fidelity numerical solutions from local patches of two coarse grid numerical solutions obtained by a convergent numerical scheme. Once trained, the NNLCIs can play the role of a computational cost-saving tool for repetitive computations with varying parameters. To generate the inputs to our NNLCI, we design on uniform rectangular grids a second-order accurate finite difference scheme that can handle curved PEC boundaries systematically. More specifically, our numerical scheme is based on the Back and Forth Error Compensation and Correction method together with the construction of ghost points via a level set framework, PDE-based extension technique, and what we term guest values. We illustrate the performance of our NNLCI subject to variations in incident waves as well as PEC boundary geometries.

Many results in extremal graph theory build on supersaturation of subgraphs. In other words, when a graph is dense enough, it contains many copies of a certain subgraph and these copies are then used as building blocks to force another subgraph of interest. Recently more success is found within this approach where one utilizes not only the large number of copies of a certain subgraph but a well-distributed collection of them to force the desired subgraph. We discuss some recent progress of this nature. The talk is built on joint work with Sean Longbrake, and with Sean Longbrake and Jie Ma.

The Fourier restriction conjecture and the Bochner-Riesz conjecture ask for Lebesgue space mapping properties of certain oscillatory integral operators. They both are central in harmonic analysis, are open in dimensions $\geq 3$, and notably have the same conjectured exponents. In the 1970s, H\"{o}rmander asked if a more general class of operators (known as H\"{o}rmander type operators) all satisfy the same $L^p$-boundedness as in the above two conjectures. A positive answer to H\"{o}rmander's question would resolve the above two conjectures and have more applications such as in the manifold setting. Unfortunately H\"{o}rmander's question is known to fail in all dimensions $\geq 3$ by the work of Bourgain and many others. It continues to fail in all dimensions $\geq 3$ even if one adds a ``positive curvature'' assumption which one does have in restriction and Bochner-Riesz settings. Bourgain showed that in dimension $3$ one always has the failure unless a derivative condition is satisfied everywhere. Joint with Shaoming Guo and Hong Wang, we generalize this condition to arbitrary dimension and call it ``Bourgain's condition''. We unify Fourier restriction and Bochner-Riesz by conjecturing that any H\"{o}rmander type operator satisfying Bourgain's condition should have the same $L^p$-boundedness as in those two conjectures. As evidence, we prove that the failure of Bourgain's condition immediately implies the failure of such an $L^p$-boundedness in every dimension. We also prove that current techniques on the two conjectures apply equally well in our conjecture and make some progress on our conjecture that consequently improves the two conjectures in higher dimensions. I will talk about some history and some interesting components in our proof.

In the study of close to integrable Hamiltonian PDEs, a fundamental question is to understand the behavior of  ''typical'' solutions. With this in mind it is natural to study the persistence of almost-periodic solutions and infinite dimensional invariant tori, which are indeed typical in the integrable case. Up to now almost all results in the literature deal with very regular solutions for model PDEs with external parameters giving a large modulation. In this talk I shall discuss a new result constructing Gevrey solutions for models with a weak parameter modulation. 

This is a joint work with G.Gentile and M.Procesi.

Optimal transport has recently found applications in a variety of fields ranging from graphics to biology. Underlying these applications is a new statistical paradigm where the goal is to couple multiple data sources. It gives rise to interesting new questions ranging from the design of estimators to minimax rates of convergence. I will review several applications where the central problem consists in estimating transport maps. After studying optimal transport as a potential solution, I will argue that its entropic version is a good alternative model. In particular, it completely escapes the curse of dimensionality that plagues statistical optimal transport.

We shall explain a simple remarkable stability phenomenon regarding the centers of the group algebras of the symmetric groups in n letters, as n goes to infinity. The same type of stability phenomenon extends to a wide class of finite groups including wreath products and finite general linear groups. Such stability has connections and applications to the cohomology rings of Hilbert schemes of n points on algebraic surfaces.

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Transport equations arise in the modelling of several complex systems, including mean field games. Such equations often involve nonlinear dependence of the solution in the drift. These nonlinear transport equations can be understood by developing a theory for transport equations with irregular drifts. In this talk, I will outline the well-posedness theory for certain transport equations in which the drift has a one-sided bound on the divergence, yielding contractive or expansive behavior, depending on the direction in which the equation is posed. The analysis requires studying the relationship between the transport and continuity equations and the associated ODE flow. The theory is then used to discuss certain nonlinear transport equations arising in the study of finite state-space mean field games. This is joint work with P.-L. Lions.

We show that if each edge of the complete bipartite graph $K_{n,n}$ is given a random list of $C(\log n)$ colors from $[n]$, then with high probability, there is a proper edge coloring where the color of each edge comes from the corresponding list. We also prove analogous results for Latin squares and Steiner triple systems. This resolves several related conjectures of Johansson, Luria-Simkin, Casselgren-Häggkvist, Simkin, and Kang-Kelly-Kühn-Methuku-Osthus. I will discuss some of the main ingredients which go into the proof: the Kahn-Kalai conjecture, absorption, and the Lovasz Local Lemma distribution. Based on joint work with Huy Tuan Pham. 

We will look at a number of interesting examples — some proven, others merely conjectured — of Hamburger moment sequences in combinatorics. We will consider ways in which this positivity may be expected, for instance in different types of combinatorial statistics on perfect matchings that turn out to encode moments in noncommutative analogues of the classical Central Limit Theorem. We will also consider situations in which this positivity may be surprising, and where proving it would open up new approaches to a class of very hard open problems in combinatorics.

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We will consider the inverse problem of determining the sound
speed or index of refraction of a medium by measuring the travel times of
waves going through the medium. This problem arises in global seismology
in an attempt to determine the inner structure of the Earth by measuring
travel times of earthquakes. It also has several applications in optics
and medical imaging among others.

The problem can be recast as a geometric problem: Can one determine
the Riemannian metric of a Riemannian manifold with boundary by
measuring the distance function between boundary points? This is the
boundary rigidity problem.

We will also describe some recent results, joint with Plamen Stefanov
and Andras Vasy, on the partial data case, where you are making
measurements on a subset of the boundary.

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Intersection bodies are a popular construction in convex geometry. I will give an introduction on these objects, convex algebraic geometry, and starshaped sets in general. Then, we will analyze some features of intersection bodies and focus on the polyotopal case. Intersection bodies of polytopes are always semialgebraic sets and they are naturally related to hyperplane arrangements, which reveal their boundary structure. Finally, we will investigate their convexity, in the two-dimensional case. The exposition will be enriched by examples and computations. This is based on joint works with Katalin Berlow, Marie-Charlotte Brandenburg and Isabelle Shankar.

Semi-supervised learning refers to the problem of recovering an input-output map using many unlabeled examples and a few labeled ones. In this talk I will survey several mathematical questions arising from the Bayesian formulation of graph-based semi-supervised learning. These questions include the modeling of prior distributions for functions on graphs, the derivation of continuum limits for the posterior, the design of scalable posterior sampling algorithms, and the contraction of the posterior in the large data limit.

The Kauffman bracket skein module S(M) of a 3-manifold M classifies polynomial invariants of links in M satisfying Kauffman bracket skein relations. Witten conjectured that the skein module (over a field, with generic A) is finite dimensional for any closed 3-manifold M. This conjecture was proved by Gunningham, Jordan, and Safronov, however their work does not lead to an explicit computation of S(M).
In fact, S(M) has been computed for a few specific families of closed 3-manifolds so far. We introduce a novel method of computing these skein modules for certain rational homology spheres. (This is joint work with R. Detcherry and E. Kalfagianni.)

The Meeting on Applied Algebraic Geometry (MAAG 2023) is a regional gathering which attracts participants primarily from the South-East of the United States. Previous meetings took place at Georgia Tech in 2015, 2018, and 2019, and at Clemson in 2016.

For more information and to register, please visit https://sites.google.com/view/maag-2023. The registration is free until February 28th, 2023, and the registration fee will become $50 after that. 

MAAG will be followed by a Macaulay2 Day on April 16.

Organizers: Abeer Al Ahmadieh, Greg Blekherman, Anton Leykin, and Josephine Yu.

Several experts from the M2internals group will give tutorials and lead the discussion. This is a part of Meeting on Applied Algebraic Geometry.

(Macaulay2 is a software system devoted to supporting research in algebraic geometry and commutative algebra.)  

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We show how the theory of Lorentzian polynomials extends to cones other than the positive orthant, and how this may be used to prove Hodge-Riemann relations of degree one for Chow rings. If time permits, we will show explicitly how the theory applies to volume polynomials of matroids and/or polytopes. Joint work with Petter Brändén.

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