Seminars and Colloquia by Series

Random growth models

Series
Research Horizons Seminar
Time
Wednesday, October 12, 2022 - 12:30 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Michael DamronGeorgia Tech

Random and irregular growth is all around us. We see it in the form of cancer growth, bacterial infection, fluid flow through porous rock, and propagating flame fronts. Simple models for these processes originated in the '50s with percolation theory and have since given rise to many new models and interesting mathematics. I will introduce a few models (percolation, invasion percolation, first-passage percolation, diffusion-limited aggregation, ...), along with some of their basic properties.

Progress towards the Burning Number Conjecture

Series
Graph Theory Seminar
Time
Tuesday, October 11, 2022 - 15:45 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Speaker
Jérémie TurcotteMcGill University

The burning number $b(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the smallest integer $k$ such that $G$ can be covered by $k$ balls of radii respectively $0,\dots,k-1$, and was introduced independently by Brandenburg and Scott at Intel as a transmission problem on processors \cite{alon} and Bonato, Janssen and Roshanbin as a model for the spread of information in social networks.

The Burning Number Conjecture \cite{bonato} claims that $b(G)\leq \left\lceil\sqrt{n}\right\rceil$, where $n$ is the number of vertices of $G$. This bound tight for paths. The previous best bound for this problem, by Bastide et al. \cite{bastide}, was $b(G)\leq \sqrt{\frac{4n}{3}}+1$.

We prove that the Burning Number Conjecture holds asymptotically, that is $b(G)\leq (1+o(1))\sqrt{n}$.

Following a brief introduction to graph burning, this talk will focus on the general ideas behind the proof.

Multi-scale modeling for complex flows at extreme computational scales

Series
Applied and Computational Mathematics Seminar
Time
Monday, October 10, 2022 - 14:00 for
Location
Skiles 005 and https://gatech.zoom.us/j/98355006347
Speaker
Spencer BryngelsonGeorgia Tech CSE

Many fluid flows display at a wide range of space and time scales. Turbulent and multiphase flows can include small eddies or particles, but likewise large advected features. This challenge makes some degree of multi-scale modeling or homogenization necessary. Such models are restricted, though: they should be numerically accurate, physically consistent, computationally expedient, and more. I present two tools crafted for this purpose. First, the fast macroscopic forcing method (Fast MFM), which is based on an elliptic pruning procedure that localizes solution operators and sparse matrix-vector sampling. We recover eddy-diffusivity operators with a convergence that beats the best spectral approximation (from the SVD), attenuating the cost of, for example, targeted RANS closures. I also present a moment-based method for closing multiphase flow equations. Buttressed by a recurrent neural network, it is numerically stable and achieves state-of-the-art accuracy. I close with a discussion of conducting these simulations near exascale. Our simulations scale ideally on the entirety of ORNL Summit's GPUs, though the HPC landscape continues to shift.

Asymptotics of surface group representations along rays

Series
Geometry Topology Seminar
Time
Monday, October 10, 2022 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Mike WolfGeorgia Tech

We study a particular distinguished component (the 'Hitchin component') of the space of surface group representations to SL(3,\R).  In this setting, both Hitchin (via Higgs bundles) and the more ancient subject of affine spheres associate a bundle of holomorphic differentials over Teichmuller space to this component of the character variety.  We focus on a ray of holomorphic differentials and provide a formula, tropical in appearance, for the asymptotic holonomy of the representations in terms of the local geometry of the differential.  Alternatively, we show how the associated equivariant harmonic maps to a symmetric space converge to a harmonic map to a building, with geometry determined by the differential. All of this is joint work with John Loftin and Andrea Tamburelli, and all the constructions and definitions will be (likely briskly) explained.

The Entropy Compression Method

Series
Graduate Student Colloquium
Time
Friday, October 7, 2022 - 15:30 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Abhishek DhawanGeorgia Tech Math

The Lovasz Local Lemma is a powerful tool to prove existence of combinatorial structures satisfying certain properties. In a constructive proof of the LLL, Moser and Tardos introduced a proof technique that is now referred to as the entropy compression method. In this talk I will describe the main idea of the method and apply it to a problem easily solved using the LLL. I will also describe recent applications of the idea to various graph coloring problems.

Smooth structures on open 4-manifolds III

Series
Geometry Topology Working Seminar
Time
Friday, October 7, 2022 - 14:00 for 1.5 hours (actually 80 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
John EtnyreGeorgia Tech

One of the most interesting and surprising features of manifold topology is the existence of topological 4-manifold that admit infinitely many smooth structures. In these talks I will discuss what is known about these “exotic” smooth structures on open manifolds, starting with R^4 and then moving on to other open 4-manifolds. We will also go over various constructions and open questions about these manifolds.  

Sparse Cholesky factorization by greedy conditional selection

Series
ACO Student Seminar
Time
Friday, October 7, 2022 - 13:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Stephen HuanGeorgia Tech CS

Dense kernel matrices resulting from pairwise evaluations of a kernel function arise naturally in machine learning and statistics. Previous work in constructing sparse transport maps or sparse approximate inverse Cholesky factors of such matrices by minimizing Kullback-Leibler divergence recovers the Vecchia approximation for Gaussian processes. However, these methods often rely only on geometry to construct the sparsity pattern, ignoring the conditional effect of adding an entry. In this work, we construct the sparsity pattern by leveraging a greedy selection algorithm that maximizes mutual information with target points, conditional on all points previously selected. For selecting k points out of N, the naive time complexity is O(N k^4), but by maintaining a partial Cholesky factor we reduce this to O(N k^2). Furthermore, for multiple (m) targets we achieve a time complexity of O(N k^2 + N m^2 + m^3) which is maintained in the setting of aggregated Cholesky factorization where a selected point need not condition every target. We directly apply the selection algorithm to image classification and recovery of sparse Cholesky factors. By minimizing Kullback-Leibler divergence, we apply the algorithm to Cholesky factorization, Gaussian process regression, and preconditioning with the conjugate gradient, improving over k-nearest neighbors particularly in high dimensional, unusual, or otherwise messy geometries with non-isotropic kernel functions.

The three-body problem and low energy space missions

Series
Time
Friday, October 7, 2022 - 11:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Online
Speaker
Marian GideaYU

https://gatech.zoom.us/j/95197085752?pwd=WmtJUVdvM1l6aUJBbHNJWTVKcVdmdz09

The three-body problem, on the dynamics of three masses under mutual gravity, serves as a model for the motion of a spacecraft relative to the Earth-Moon or Sun-Earth system. We describe the equations of motion for the three-body problem and the geometric objects that organize the dynamics: equilibriums points, periodic and quasi-periodic orbits, and their stable and unstable manifolds. As it turns out, trajectories that follow these manifolds require zero energy cost. We describe several methods to design low energy spacecraft trajectories from Earth to Moon, as well as maneuvers to change the inclination of the orbit of a satellite relative to the ecliptic. This is based on joint works with E. Belbruno, F. Topputo, A. Delshams, and P. Roldan.   
 

Recovery of quantum information: quantum Markov chains and matrix product states

Series
Math Physics Seminar
Time
Thursday, October 6, 2022 - 16:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles Room 005
Speaker
Brian KennedySchool of Physics, Georgia Tech

The mathematical theory of the recovery of quantum states stored in a quantum memory, is intimately related to the subadditivity property of the entropy function, and the class of states known as quantum Markov chains. In this talk we will introduce some of the basic ideas of this area of quantum information theory. We discuss a theorem regarding recovery of a widely studied class of quantum states, the matrix product states, and its implication for the mutual information stored over separated regions of a one dimensional quantum memory. This is joint work with Pavel Svetlichnyy and Shivan Mittal.

A stochastic approach for noise stability on the hypercube

Series
Stochastics Seminar
Time
Thursday, October 6, 2022 - 15:30 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86578123009
Speaker
Dan MikulincerMIT

Please Note: Recording: https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/cIdTfvS0tjar04MWv9ltWrVxAcmsUSFvDznprSBT285wc0VzURfB3X8jR0CpWIWQ.Sz557oNX3k5L1cpN

We revisit the notion of noise stability in the hypercube and show how one can replace the usual heat semigroup with more general stochastic processes. We will then introduce a re-normalized Brownian motion, embedding the discrete hypercube into the Wiener space, and analyze the noise stability along its paths. Our approach leads to a new quantitative form of the 'Majority is Stablest' theorem from Boolean analysis and to progress on the 'most informative bit' conjecture of Kumar and Courtade.

Pages