Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

We study the ordinary differential equation \varepsilon \ddot x + \dot x + \varepsilon g(x) = \e f(\omega t), with f and g analytic and f quasi-periodic in t with frequency vector \omega\in\mathds{R}^{d}. We show that if there exists c_{0}\in\mathds{R} such that g(c_{0}) equals the average of f and the first non-zero derivative of g at c_{0} is of odd order \mathfrak{n}, then, for \varepsilon small enough and under very mild Diophantine conditions on \omega, there exists a quasi-periodic solution "response solution" close to c_{0}, with the same frequency vector as f. In particular if f is a trigonometric polynomial the Diophantine condition on \omega can be completely removed. Moreover we show that for \mathfrak{n}=1 such a solution depends analytically on \e in a domain of the complex plane tangent more than quadratically to the imaginary axis at the origin. These results have been obtained in collaboration with Roberto Feola (Universit\`a di Roma ``La Sapienza'') and Guido Gentile (Universit\`a di Roma Tre).

A few years ago I proved that any rectangular diagram of the unknot admits monotonic simplification by elementary moves. More recently M.Prasolov and I addressed the question: when a rectangular diagram of a link admits at least one step of simplification? It turned out that an answer can be given naturally in terms of Legendrian links. On this way, we resolved positively a conjecture by V.Jones on the invariance of the algebraic crossing number of a minimal braid, and a few similar questions.

Thurston's gluing equations are polynomial equations invented byThurston to explicitly compute hyperbolic structures or, more generally, representations in PGL(2,C). This is done via so called shape coordinates.We generalize the shape coordinates to obtain a parametrization ofrepresentations in PGL(n,C). We give applications to quantum topology, anddiscuss an intriguing duality between the shape coordinates and thePtolemy coordinates of Garoufalidis-Thurston-Zickert. The shapecoordinates and Ptolemy coordinates can be viewed as 3-dimensional analogues of the X- and A-coordinates on higher Teichmuller spaces due toFock and Goncharov.

In algorithmic game theory, the price of anarchy framework studies efficiency loss in decentralized environments. In optimization and decision theory, the price of robustness framework explores the tradeoffs between optimality and robustness in the case of single agent decision making under uncertainty. We establish a connection between the two that provides a novel analytic framework for proving tight performance guarantees for distributed systems in uncertain environments.We present applications of this framework to novel variants of atomic congestion games with uncertain costs, for which we provide tight performance bounds under a wide range of risk attitudes. Our results establish that the individual's attitude towards uncertainty has a critical effect on system performance and should therefore be a subject of close and systematic investigation.