Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

The oscillation of a Laplacian eigenfunction gives a great deal of information about the manifold on which it is defined. This oscillation can be encoded in the nodal deficiency, an important geometric quantity that is notoriously hard to compute, or even estimate. Here we compare two recently obtained formulas for the nodal deficiency, one in terms of an energy function on the space of equipartitions of the manifold, and the other in terms of a two-sided Dirichlet-to-Neumann map defined on the nodal set. We relate these two approaches by giving an explicit formula for the Hessian of the equipartition energy in terms of the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map. This allows us to compute Hessian eigenfunctions, and hence directions of steepest descent, for the equipartition energy in terms of the corresponding Dirichlet-to-Neumann eigenfunctions. Our results do not assume bipartiteness, and hence are relevant to the study of spectral minimal partitions.  This is joint work with Greg Berkolaiko, Yaiza Canzani and Graham Cox.

A theorem of Bertini says that an irreducible algebraic variety remains irreducible after intersecting with a generic hyperplane.  We will discuss toric Bertini theorems for intersections with generic algebraic subtori (defined by generic binomial equations) instead of hyperplanes. As an application, we obtain a tropical Bertini theorem and a strengthening of the Structure Theorem of tropical algebraic geometry, by showing that irreducible tropical varieties remain connected through codimension one even after removing some facets.  As part of the proof of the Toric Bertini over prime characteristics, we constructed a new algebraically closed field containing the multivariate rational functions, which is smaller than previously known constructions.  This is based on joint works with Diane Maclagan, Francesca Gandini, Milena Hering, Fatemeh Mohammadi, Jenna Rajchgot, and Ashley Wheeler.

This series of talks will discuss connections between Riemannian geometry and contact topology. Both structures have deep connections to the topology of 3-manifolds, but there has been little study of the interactions between them (at least the implications in contact topology). We will see that there are interesting connections between curvature and properties of contact structures. The talks will give a brief review of both Riemannian geometry and contact topology and then discuss various was one might try to connect them. There will be many open problems discussed (probably later in the series). 

The game of HEX has deep mathematical underpinnings despite its simple rules.  What could this game possibly have to do with coffee?!  And how does that connection, once identified, lead to consideration of ferromagnetism and even to the melting polar ice caps?  Join Hugo Duminil-Copin, Professor of Mathematics at IHES and the University of Geneva, for an exploration of the way in which mathematical thinking can help us make some truly surprising connections.