Seminars and Colloquia by Series

Athens-Atlanta Number Theory Seminar - Lecture 1 - Maximal varieties over finite fields

Series
Other Talks
Time
Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - 16:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Jared WeinsteinInstitute for Advanced Study and Boston University
This is joint work with Mitya Boyarchenko. We construct a special hypersurface X over a finite field, which has the property of "maximality", meaning that it has the maximum number of rational points relative to its topology. Our variety is derived from a certain unipotent algebraic group, in an analogous manner as Deligne-Lusztig varieties are derived from reductive algebraic groups. As a consequence, the cohomology of X can be shown to realize a piece of the local Langlands correspondence for certain wild Weil parameters of low conductor.

Bernstein's problem on weighted polynomial approximation

Series
Analysis Seminar
Time
Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - 14:05 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Alexei PoltoratskiTexas A&M
The problem of weighted polynomial approximation of continuousfunctionson the real line was posted by S. Bernstein in 1924. It asks for adescription of theset of weights such that polynomials are dense in the space of continuousfunctions withrespect to the corresponding weighted uniform norm. Throughout the 20thcentury Bernstein's problem was studied by many prominent analysts includingAhkiezer, Carleson, Mergelyan andM. Riesz.In my talk I will discuss some of the complex analytic methods that can beapplied in Bernstein's problem along with a recently found solution.

Rays and Souls in Von Mangoldt Planes

Series
Geometry Topology Student Seminar
Time
Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - 14:05 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Eric ChoiEmory University
Knowledge of rays and critical points of infinity in von Mangoldt planes can be applied to understanding the structure of open complete manifolds with lower radial curvature bounds. We will show how the set of souls is computed for every von Mangoldt plane of nonnegative curvature. We will also make some observations on the structure of the set of critical points of infinity for von Mangoldt planes with negative curvature.

Getting in shape with eigenvalues

Series
Research Horizons Seminar
Time
Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - 12:05 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Evans HarrellSchool of Mathematics, Georgia Tech
Eigenvalues of linear operators often correspond to physical observables; for example they determine the energy levels in quantum mechanics and the frequencies of vibration in acoustics. Properties such as the shape of a system are encoded in the the set of eigenvalues, known as the "spectrum," but in subtle ways. I'll talk about some classic theorems about how geometry and topology show up in the spectrum of differential operators, and then I'll present some recent work, with connections to physical models such as quantum waveguides, wires, and graphs.

Vectors, Sampling and Massive Data

Series
ACO Distinguished Lecture
Time
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 - 16:30 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Klaus 1116
Speaker
Ravi KannanMicrosoft Research India

Please Note: There will be a reception in the Atrium of the Klaus building at 4PM.

Modeling data as high-dimensional (feature) vectors is a staple in Computer Science, its use in ranking web pages reminding us again of its effectiveness. Algorithms from Linear Algebra (LA) provide a crucial toolkit. But, for modern problems with massive data, these algorithms may take too long. Random sampling to reduce the size suggests itself. I will give a from-first-principles description of the LA connection, then discuss sampling techniques developed over the last decade for vectors, matrices and graphs. Besides saving time, sampling leads to sparsification and compression of data. Speaker's bio

Global existence results for water waves

Series
PDE Seminar
Time
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 - 15:05 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Pierre GermainNew York University, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
I will describe results of global existence and scattering for water waves (inviscid, irrotational), in the case of small data. I will examine two physical settings: gravity, but no capillarity; or capillarity, but no gravity. The proofs rely on the space-time resonance method, which I will briefly present. This is joint work with Nader Masmoudi and Jalal Shatah.

A microscopic derivation of Ginzburg-Landau theory

Series
Math Physics Seminar
Time
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 - 11:05 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Rupert FrankDept. of Math, Princeton University
We describe the first rigorous derivation of the celebrated Ginzburg-Landau (GL) theory, starting from the microscopic Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) model. Close to the critical temperature, GL arises as an effective theory on the macroscopic scale. The relevant scaling limit is semiclassical in nature, and semiclassical analysis, with minimal regularity assumptions, plays an important part in our proof. The talk is based on joint work with C. Hainzl, R. Seiringer and J. P. Solovej.

Hilbert-Kunz multiplicities

Series
Algebra Seminar
Time
Monday, October 31, 2011 - 16:05 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Florian EnescuGeorgia State University
The talk will discuss the notion of Hilbert-Kunz multiplicity, presenting its general theory and listing some of the outstanding open problems together with recent progress on them.

Joint Emory-Tech-UGA Seminar - A contact invariant in sutured monopole homology

Series
Geometry Topology Seminar
Time
Monday, October 31, 2011 - 16:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
UGA Boyd 302
Speaker
John BaldwinPrinceton

Please Note: Note that this talk is on the UGA campus.

A contact manifold with boundary naturally gives rise to a sutured manifold, as defined by Gabai. Honda, Kazez and Matic have used this relationship to define an invariant of contact manifolds with boundary in sutured Floer homology, a Heegaard-Floer-type invariant of sutured manifolds developed by Juhasz. More recently, Kronheimer and Mrowka have defined an invariant of sutured manifolds in the setting of monopole Floer homology. In this talk, I'll describe work-in-progress to define an invariant of contact manifolds with boundary in their sutured monopole theory. If time permits, I'll talk about analogues of Juhasz' sutured cobordism maps and the Honda-Kazez-Matic gluing maps in the monopole setting. Likely applications of this work include an obstruction to the existence of Lagrangian cobordisms between Legendrian knots in S^3. Other potential applications include the construction of a bordered monopole theory, following an outline of Zarev. This is joint work with Steven Sivek.

Joint Emory-Tech-UGA Seminar - Small entropy surface homeomorphisms

Series
Geometry Topology Seminar
Time
Monday, October 31, 2011 - 14:30 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
UGA Boyd 302
Speaker
Dan MargalitGa Tech

Please Note: Note that this talk is on the UGA campus.

To every homeomorphism of a surface, we can attach a positive real number, the entropy. We are interested in the question of what these homeomorphisms look like when the entropy is positive, but small. We give several perspectives on this problem, considering it from the complex analytic, surface topological, 3-manifold theoretical, and numerical points of view. This is joint work with Benson Farb and Chris Leininger.

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