Seminars and Colloquia by Series

Non-escape of mass for QUE in hyperbolic 4-manifolds

Series
CDSNS Colloquium
Time
Friday, November 22, 2024 - 15:30 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 314
Speaker
Alexandre Perozim de FaveriStanford University

The arithmetic quantum unique ergodicity (AQUE) conjecture predicts that the L^2 mass of Hecke-Maass cusp forms on an arithmetic hyperbolic manifold becomes equidistributed as the Laplace eigenvalue grows. If the underlying manifold is non-compact, mass could “escape to infinity”. This possibility was ruled out by Soundararajan for arithmetic surfaces, which when combined with celebrated work of Lindenstrauss completed the proof of AQUE for surfaces.

We establish non-escape of mass for Hecke-Maass cusp forms on a congruence quotient of hyperbolic 4-space. Unlike in the setting of hyperbolic 2- or 3-manifolds (for which AQUE has been proved), the number of terms in the Hecke relations is unbounded, which prevents us from naively applying Cauchy-Schwarz. We instead view the isometry group as a group of quaternionic matrices, and rely on non-commutative unique factorization, along with certain structural features of the Hecke action. Joint work with Zvi Shem-Tov.

 

Multidimensional local limit theorem in deterministic systems and an application to non-convergence of polynomial multiple averages - NOTE IRREGULAR TIME/DATE

Series
CDSNS Colloquium
Time
Thursday, November 21, 2024 - 16:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 314
Speaker
Shrey SanadhyaHebrew University

In this talk, for an ergodic probability preserving system $(X,\mathcal{B},m,T)$, we will discuss the existence of a function $f:X\to \mathbb{Z}^d$, whose corresponding cocycle satisfies the $d$-dimensional local central limit theorem.
As an application, we resolve a question of Huang, Shao and Ye, and Franzikinakis and Host regarding non-convergence in $L^2$ of polynomial multiple averages of non-commuting zero entropy transformations. If time allows, we will also discuss the first examples of failure of multiple recurrence for zero entropy transformations along polynomial iterates. This is joint work with Zemer Kosloff (arXiv:2409.05087). 

Some open problems concerning the dynamics of Earth’s ice sheets

Series
CDSNS Colloquium
Time
Friday, November 8, 2024 - 15:30 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 314
Speaker
Alex RobelGeorgia Tech

Ice sheets are fascinating dynamical systems that flow, fracture and melt on a wide range of time scales, presenting a range of challenging prediction problems with important implications for how coastal communities plan for sea level rise. In this talk, I will introduce a few outstanding problems concerning the evolution of Earth’s ice sheets under climate change. I will start by introduce the classical theory of “marine ice sheet instability” which describes how glacier ice flows from the land to ice which floats on the ocean, and leads to a saddle-node bifurcation in ice sheet size under climate change. Many contemporary predictions of ice sheet change hold that such a bifurcation is currently unfolding at a number of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica and could lead to runaway ice sheet retreat even if global temperatures stop increasing in the future. I discuss our recent work on whether this bifurcation may actually play out as a sliding-crossing bifurcation, and the role of a stochastic climate system in driving the system through this bifurcation where nonlinearities cause evolution of the leading order moments of the distribution of glacier state.

Projections and sumsets of self-affine fractals

Series
CDSNS Colloquium
Time
Friday, November 1, 2024 - 15:30 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 314
Speaker
Cagri SertWarwick University

I will discuss some results from our ongoing work with Ian D. Morris which aims at a systematic study of projections of self-affine fractals.
After explaining the extension of classical results of Falconer to the projections of self-affine fractals, I will discuss:

  • the existence of equilibrium states having non-exact dimensional linear projections (equilibrium states themselves are exact dimensional by Feng);
  • the existence of self-affine fractals in dimensions at least 4, whose set of exceptional projections in the sense of Marstand Projection Theorem contains higher degree algebraic varieties in Grassmannians (such constructions are not possible even in Borel category in dimension 3 by the solution of a conjecture of Fassler-Orponen by Gan et.al., neither in any dimension if the linear parts of affinities acts strongly irreducibly on all exterior powers, by Barany, Hochman, Rapaport);
  • the existence of self-affine fractals whose sumsets have lower than expected dimension without satisfying an arithmetic resonance (impossible in dimension 1 by Hochman, Shmerkin, Peres and in dimension 2 by Pyorala).

Multidimensional Stability of Planar Travelling Waves for Stochastically Perturbed Reaction-Diffusion Systems

Series
CDSNS Colloquium
Time
Friday, October 18, 2024 - 15:30 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 314
Speaker
Mark van den BoschLeiden University

Travelling pulses and waves are a rich subset of feasible patterns in reaction-diffusion systems. Many have investigated their existence, stability, and other properties, but what happens if the deterministic dynamics is affected by random occurrences? How does the interplay between diffusion and noise influence the velocity, curvature, and stability of multidimensional patterns?

 

We consider reaction-diffusion systems with multiplicative noise on a spatial domain of dimension two or higher. The noise process is white in time, coloured in space, and invariant under translations; based on applications. Inspired by previous works on the real line, we establish the multidimensional stability of planar waves on a cylindrical domain on time scales that are exponentially long with respect to the noise strength. In the deterministic setting, multidimensional stability of planar waves on the whole space has been obtained, and we show to what extend we can do this in the stochastic case.

 

The metastability result above is achieved by means of a stochastic phase tracking mechanism that can be maintained over such long-time scales. The corresponding mild formulation of our problem features stochastic integrals with respect to anticipating integrands, which hence cannot be understood within the well-established setting of Itô-integrals. To circumvent this problem, we exploit and extend recently developed theory concerning forward integrals.

Multidimensional Stability of Planar Travelling Waves for Stochastically Perturbed Reaction-Diffusion Systems

Series
CDSNS Colloquium
Time
Friday, October 18, 2024 - 15:30 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 314
Speaker
Mark van den BoschLeiden University

Please Note: Talk is in-person; zoom link if needed: https://gatech.zoom.us/j/91390791493?pwd=QnpaWHNEOHZTVXlZSXFkYTJ0b0Q0UT09

 

Travelling pulses and waves are a rich subset of feasible patterns in reaction-diffusion systems. Many have investigated their existence, stability, and other properties, but what happens if the deterministic dynamics is affected by random occurrences? How does the interplay between diffusion and noise influence the velocity, curvature, and stability of multidimensional patterns?

We consider reaction-diffusion systems with multiplicative noise on a spatial domain of dimension two or higher. The noise process is white in time, coloured in space, and invariant under translations; based on applications. Inspired by previous works on the real line, we establish the multidimensional stability of planar waves on a cylindrical domain on time scales that are exponentially long with respect to the noise strength. In the deterministic setting, multidimensional stability of planar waves on the whole space has been obtained, and we show to what extend we can do this in the stochastic case.

The metastability result above is achieved by means of a stochastic phase tracking mechanism that can be maintained over such long-time scales. The corresponding mild formulation of our problem features stochastic integrals with respect to anticipating integrands, which hence cannot be understood within the well-established setting of Itô-integrals. To circumvent this problem, we exploit and extend recently developed theory concerning forward integrals.

Generic dynamics of the mean curvature flows

Series
CDSNS Colloquium
Time
Friday, October 11, 2024 - 15:30 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 314
Speaker
Jinxin XueTsinghua University

Please Note: Talk is in-person. Zoom-link available as well: https://gatech.zoom.us/j/91390791493?pwd=QnpaWHNEOHZTVXlZSXFkYTJ0b0Q0UT09

The mean curvature flow is to evolve a hypersurface in Euclidean space using the mean curvatures at each point as the velocity field. The flow has good smoothing property, but also develops singularities. The singularities are modeled on an object called shrinkers, which give homothetic solutions to the flows. As there are infinitely many shrinkers that seem impossible to classify, it is natural to explore the idea of generic mean curvature flows that is to introduce a generic perturbation of the initial conditions. In this talk, we shall explain our work on this topic, including perturbing away nonspherical and noncylindrical shrinkers, and generic isolatedness of cylindrical singularities. The talk is based on a series of works jointly with Ao Sun.

Quantitative finiteness of hyperplanes in hybrid manifolds

Series
CDSNS Colloquium
Time
Friday, September 6, 2024 - 15:30 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 314
Speaker
Anthony SanchezUniversity of California - San Diego

The geometry of non-arithmetic hyperbolic manifolds is mysterious in spite of how plentiful they are. McMullen and Reid independently conjectured that such manifolds have only finitely many totally geodesic hyperplanes and their conjecture was recently settled by Bader-Fisher-Miller-Stover in dimensions larger than 3. Their works rely on superrigidity theorems and are not constructive. In this talk, we strengthen their result by proving a quantitative finiteness theorem for non-arithmetic hyperbolic manifolds that arise from a gluing construction of Gromov and Piatetski-Shapiro. Perhaps surprisingly, the proof relies on an effective density theorem for certain periodic orbits. The effective density theorem uses a number of ideas including Margulis functions, a restricted projection theorem, and an effective equidistribution result for measures that are nearly full dimensional. This is joint work with K. W. Ohm.

Sparse equidistribution in unipotent flows

Series
CDSNS Colloquium
Time
Friday, August 30, 2024 - 15:30 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 314
Speaker
Asaf KatzGeorgia Tech

Equidistribution problems, originating from the classical works of Kronecker, Hardy and Weyl about equidistribution of sequences mod 1, are of major interest in modern number theory. 

We will discuss how some of those problems relate to unipotent flows and present a conjecture by Margulis, Sarnak and Shah regarding an analogue of these results for the case of the horocyclic flow over a Riemann surface. Moreover, we provide evidence towards this conjecture by bounding from above the Hausdorff dimension of the set of points which do not equidistribute.

The talk will be accessible, no prior knowledge is assumed.

Dynamic Stability in Stochastic Gradient Descent

Series
CDSNS Colloquium
Time
Friday, May 24, 2024 - 15:30 for
Location
Skiles 254
Speaker
Dennis ChemnitzFU Berlin

Please Note: Streaming via Zoom: https://gatech.zoom.us/j/91390791493?pwd=QnpaWHNEOHZTVXlZSXFkYTJ0b0Q0UT09

Most modern machine learning applications are based on overparameterized neural networks trained by variants of stochastic gradient descent. To explain the performance of these networks from a theoretical perspective (in particular the so-called "implicit bias"), it is necessary to understand the random dynamics of the optimization algorithms. Mathematically this amounts to the study of random dynamical systems with manifolds of equilibria. In this talk, I will give a brief introduction to machine learning theory and explain how almost-sure Lyapunov exponents and moment Lyapunov exponents can be used to characterize the set of possible limit points for stochastic gradient descent.

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