Seminars and Colloquia by Series

Polya sequences, gap theorems, and Toeplitz kernels

Series
Analysis Seminar
Time
Wednesday, October 20, 2010 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 269
Speaker
Mishko MitkovskiGeorgia Tech
A separated sequence of real numbers is called a Polya sequence if the only entire functions of zero type which are bounded on this sequence are the constants. The Polya-Levinson problem asks for a description of all Polya sequences. In this talk, I will present some points of the recently obtained solution. The approach is based on the use of Toeplitz operators and de Branges spaces of entire functions. I will also present some partial results about the related Beurling gap problem.

Orthogonal Polynomials and Beyond

Series
Research Horizons Seminar
Time
Wednesday, October 20, 2010 - 12:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 171
Speaker
Lilian WongSchool of Mathematics - Georgia Institute of Technology

Please Note: Hosts: Yao Li and Ricardo Restrepo

This will be an expository talk on the study of orthogonal polynomials on the real line and on the unit circle. Topics include recurrence relations, recurrence coefficients and simple examples. The talk will conclude with applications of orthogonal polynomials to other areas of research.

Tropical and Berkovich analytic curves

Series
Tropical Geometry Seminar
Time
Wednesday, October 20, 2010 - 10:05 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 114
Speaker
Matt BakerGeorgia Tech
We will discuss the relationship between a Berkovich analytic curve over a complete and algebraically closed non-Archimedean field and its tropicalizations, paying special attention to the natural metric structure on both sides. This is joint work with Sam Payne and Joe Rabinoff.

Self-avoiding walks and sampling in statistical physics models

Series
Probability Working Seminar
Time
Friday, October 15, 2010 - 15:05 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 249
Speaker
Ricardo RestrepoSchool of Math, Georgia Tech
 We will discuss the role that self-avoiding walks play in sampling 'physical' models on graphs, allowing to translate  the complicated calculation of the marginals to a tree recurrence which, under the appropriate conditions (e.g. some form of 'spatial mixing'), reduces to a polynomial recurrence. This talk is mainly based on Dror Weitz' article "Counting independent sets up to the tree threshold". 

Non-commutative Geometry II

Series
Geometry Topology Working Seminar
Time
Friday, October 15, 2010 - 14:00 for 2 hours
Location
Skiles 171
Speaker
Jean BellissardGa Tech

Please Note: Note this is a 2 hour talk.

This series of lecture will try to give some basic facts about Noncommutative Geometry for the members of the School of Mathematics who want to learn about it. In the first lecture, the basics tools will be presented, (i) the philosophy and the notion of space, and (ii) the notion of C*-algebra, (iii) groupoids. As many examples as possible will be described to illustrate the purpose. In the following lectures, in addition to describing these tools more thoroughly, two aspects can be developed depending upon the wishes of the audience: A- Topology, K-theory, cyclic cohomology B- Noncommutative metric spaces and Riemannian Geometry.

Binary subtrees with few path labels

Series
Combinatorics Seminar
Time
Thursday, October 14, 2010 - 11:05 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 114
Speaker
Kevin Milans University of South Carolina
A rooted tree is _k-ary_ if all non-leaves have k children; it is_complete_ if all leaves have the same distance from the root. Let T bethe complete ternary tree of depth n. If each edge in T is labeled 0 or1, then the labels along the edges of a path from the root to a leafform a "path label" in {0,1}^n. Let f(n) be the maximum, over all{0,1}-edge-labeled complete ternary trees T with depth n, of the minimumnumber of distinct path labels on a complete binary subtree of depth nin T.The problem of bounding f(n) arose in studying a problem incomputability theory, where it was hoped that f(n)/2^n tends to 0 as ngrows. This is true; we show that f(n)/2^n is O(2^{-c \sqrt(n)}) forsome positive constant c. From below, we show that f(n) >= (1.548)^nfor sufficiently large n. This is joint work with Rod Downey, NoamGreenberg, and Carl Jockusch.

Inequalities for eigenvalues of sums of self-adjoint operators

Series
Research Horizons Seminar
Time
Wednesday, October 13, 2010 - 12:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 171
Speaker
Wing Suet LiSchool of Mathematics - Georgia Institute of Technology

Please Note: Hosts: Yao and Ricardo

Consider self-adjoint operators $A, B, C : \mathcal{H} \to \mathcal{H}$ on a finite-dimensional Hilbert space such that $A + B + C = 0$. Let $\{\lambda_j (A)\}$, $\{\lambda_j (B)\}$, and $\{\lambda_j (C)\}$ be sequences of eigenvalues of $A, B$, and $C$ counting multiplicity, arranged in decreasing order. In 1962, A. Horn conjectured that the relations of $\{\lambda_j (A)\}$,$\{\lambda_j (B)\}$, and $\{\lambda_j (C)\}$ can be characterized by a set of inequalities defined inductively. This problem was eventually solved by A. Klyachko and Knutson-Tao in the late 1990s. Recently together with H. Bercovici, Collins, Dykema, and Timotin, we are able to find a proof to show that the inequalities are valid for self-adjoint elements that satisfies the relation $A+B+C=0$,  and the proof can be applied to finite von Neumann algebra. The major difficulty in our argument is to show that certain generalized Schubert cells have nonempty intersection. In the finite dimensional case, it follows from the classical intersection theory. However, there is no readily available intersection theory for von Neumann algebras. Our argument requiresa good understanding of the combinatorial structure of honeycombs, and produces an actual element in the intersection algorithmically, and it seems to be new even in finite dimensions.

q-holonomic Sequences and Tropical Curves

Series
Tropical Geometry Seminar
Time
Wednesday, October 13, 2010 - 10:05 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 114
Speaker
Stavros GaroufalidisGeorgia Tech
I will discuss what is a q-holonomic sequence (ie a sequence of rational functions in one variable that satisfies a linear recursion), and three invariants of such sequences (a) the characteristic variety, a plane curve in C^*2, (b) a tropical curve, (c) a quadratic quasi-polynomial.As usual, I will give examples (eg coming from knot theory), and I will connect this talk to the previous one on "Knots and Plane Curves" that I talked about already. No need to know what is a q-holonomic sequence.

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