Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

The Pentagram map is a projectively natural iteration on plane polygons. Computer experiments show that the Pentagram map has quasi-periodic behavior. I shall explain that the Pentagram map is a completely integrable system whose continuous limit is the Boussinesq equation, a well known integrable system of soliton type. As a by-product, I shall demonstrate new configuration theorems of classical projective geometry.

Real life networks are usually large and have a very complicated structure. It is tempting therefore to simplify or reduce the associated graph of interactions in a network while maintaining its basic structure as well as some characteristic(s) of the original graph. A key question is which characteristic(s) to conserve while reducing a graph. Studies of dynamical networks reveal that an important characteristic of a network's structure is a spectrum of its adjacency matrix. In this talk we present an approach which allows for the reduction of a general weighted graph in such a way that the spectrum of the graph's (weighted) adjacency matrix is maintained up to some finite set that is known in advance. (Here, the possible weights belong to the set of complex rational functions, i.e. to a very general class of weights). A graph can be isospectrally reduced to a graph on any subset of its nodes, which could be an important property for various applications. It is also possible to introduce a new equivalence relation in the set of all networks. Namely, two networks are spectrally equivalent if each of them can be isospectrally reduced onto one and the same (smaller) graph. This result should also be useful for analysis of real networks. As the first application of the isospectral graph reduction we considered a problem of estimation of spectra of matrices. It happens that our procedure allows for improvements of the estimates obtained by all three classical methods given by Gershgorin, Brauer and Brualdi. (Joint work with B.Webb) A talk will be readily accessible to undergraduates familiar with matrices and complex functions.

A classification of the dynamics of polynomials in one complex variable has remained elusive, even when considering only the simpler "structurally stable" polynomials. In this talk, I will describe the basics of polynomial iteration, leading up to recent results in the direction of a complete classification. In particular, I will describe a (singular) metric on the complex plane induced by the iteration of a polynomial. I will explain how this geometric structure relates to topological conjugacy classes within the moduli space of polynomials.

General relativity is based on a deep interplay between physics and mathematics: Gravity is encoded in geometry. It has had spectacular observational success and has also pushed forward the frontier of geometric analysis. But the theory is incomplete because it ignores quantum physics. It predicts that the space-time ends at singularities such as the big-bang. Physics then comes to a halt. Recent developments in loop quantum gravity show that these predictions arise because the theory has been pushed beyond the domain of its validity. With new inputs from mathematics, one can extend cosmology beyond the big-bang. The talk will provide an overview of this new and rich interplay between physics and mathematics.