Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

For any positive integer $t$, a $t$-broom is a graph obtained from $K_{1,t+1}$ by subdividing an edge once.  In this paper, we show that, for graphs $G$ without induced $t$-brooms, we have $\chi(G) =  o(\omega(G)^{t+1})$, where  $\chi(G)$ and $\omega(G)$ are the chromatic number and clique number of $G$, respectively. When $t=2$, this answers a question of  Schiermeyer and Randerath. Moreover, for $t=2$, we strengthen the bound on $\chi(G)$ to $7.5\omega(G)^2$, confirming a conjecture of Sivaraman. For $t\geq 3$ and {$t$-broom, $K_{t,t}$}-free graphs, we improve the bound to $o(\omega^{t-1+\frac{2}{t+1}})$. Joint work with Xiaonan Liu, Zhiyu Wang, and Xingxing Yu.

A link L in the 3-sphere is called chi-slice if it bounds a properly embedded surface F in the 4-ball with Euler characteristic 1. If L is a knot, then this definition coincides with the usual definition of sliceness. One feature of such a link L is that if the determinant of L is nonzero, then the double cover of the 3-sphere branched over L bounds a rational homology ball. In this talk, we will explore the chi-sliceness of 3-braid links. In particular, we will construct explicit families of chi-slice quasi-alternating 3-braids using band moves and we will obstruct the chi-sliceness of almost all other quasi-alternating 3-braid links by showing that their double branched covers do not bound rational homology 4-balls. This is a work in progress joint with Vitaly Brejevs.

Let, for every positive integer d, a tuple of events A_1,...,A_d be given. Let X_d be the number of events that occur. We state new sufficient conditions for the following extremal independence property: |P(X_d=0)-\prod_{i=1}^d(1-P(A_i))|\to 0. These conditions imply a series of results on asymptotic distributions of certain maximum statistics. In particular, for the maximum number X_n of cliques sharing one vertex in G(n,p), we find sequences a_n and b_n such that (X_n-a_n)/b_n converges in distribution to a standard Gumbel random variable.

This thesis consists of four works in dynamical systems with a focus on billiards. In the first part, we consider open dynamical systems, where there exists at least a ``hole" of positive measure in the phase space which some portion of points in phase space escapes through that hole at each iterate of the dynamical system map. Here, we study the escape rate (a quantity that presents at what rate points in phase space escape through the hole) and various estimations of the escape rate of an open dynamical system. We uncover a reason why the escape rate is faster than expected, which is the convexity of the function defining escape rate. Moreover, exact computations of escape rate and its estimations are present for the skewed tent map and Arnold’s cat map.

In the second part of the thesis, we study physical billiards where the moving particle has a finite nonzero size. In contrast to mathematical billiards where a trajectory is excluded when it hits a corner point of the boundary, in physical billiards reflection of the physical particle (a ball) off a visible corner point is well-defined. Initially, we study properties of such reflections in a physical billiards. Our results confirm that the reflection considered in the literature about physical billiards are indeed no-slip friction-free (elastic) collisions.

In the third part of the thesis, we study physical Ehrenfests' wind-tree models, where we show that physical wind-tree models are dynamically richer than the well-known Lorentz gas model. More precisely, when we replace the point particle by a physical one (a ball), the wind-tree models show a new superdiffusive regimes that never been observed in any other model such as Lorentz gas.

Finally, we prove that typical physical polygonal billiard is hyperbolic at least on a subset of positive measure and therefore has a positive Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy for any positive radius of the moving particle.