Seminars and Colloquia by Series

Ziggurats and taut foliations

Series
Geometry Topology Seminar
Time
Monday, September 14, 2026 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Jonathan ZungGeorgia Tech

Given a link in a closed 3-manifold, which Dehn surgery multislopes give rise to 3-manifolds with taut foliations? In this talk, I will discuss the ziggurat phenomenon: restricting to those foliations transverse to a fixed flow on the link complement, the set of multislopes typically has a fractal staircase shape with rational corners. In joint work with Thomas Massoni, we explain the ziggurat phenomenon in some contexts using tools from contact geometry. For those who have already seen a talk about this work, I'll try to emphasize some different aspects.

Ideal membership problems and a conjecture on sumsets

Series
Algebra Seminar
Time
Monday, September 14, 2026 - 13:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Speaker
Hailong DaoUniversity of Kansas

Given a collection of multivariate polynomials $F, F_1, …F_n$, to determine whether $F$ can be written as $F= \sum G_iF_i$ is an important problem, both in theory and practice. In this talk, I will explain how some problems of this nature, even in 2 or 3 variables, can become interesting and difficult. An unexpected connection to a conjecture on sumsets will be explained. As the time of writing, the conjecture is unsolved by both humans and AIs.  

Diffusion Approximation of a Proportional Processor Sharing Queue with Reneging

Series
Stochastics Seminar
Time
Thursday, September 10, 2026 - 15:30 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Eva LoeserUNC Chapel Hill

Abstract: In the early 2000s, substantial work was devoted to understanding the generally distributed processor-sharing queue, which can be viewed as an idealization of round-robin or time-sharing protocols arising in computer-system applications. The fluid limit for a processor-sharing queue with reneging was established, but the diffusion limit for a processor-sharing queue with impatience was obtained only under a “soft deadlines” formulation, in which the patience times of jobs are tracked but jobs do not actually leave the queue when their patience times expire. This limitation was largely a consequence of the methodology underlying that research program: much of the analysis relied on heavy-traffic limits and the state-space-collapse framework introduced by Bramson and Williams, which is not naturally suited to systems with reneging. More recent work has developed methods for obtaining diffusion approximations of measure-valued queueing systems using classical central limit theorem analysis, martingale methods, and SPDE-valued limits (see work by Ramanan and by the author of this talk). Using these methods, the diffusion approximation for a processor-sharing queue with true reneging can be obtained.

Bio: Eva Loeser is a postdoctoral research associate in the Applied Probability Group in the Department of Statistics and Operations Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research interests include stochastic processes, particularly fluid and diffusion approximations of stochastic systems, high-dimensional stochastic processes, and universal limiting objects such as stochastic partial differential equations (SPDEs) and semimartingale reflecting Brownian motions (SRBMs). The models she studies arise in applications including systems biology, computer systems, queueing theory, operations research, and mathematical physics.

Contact geometry and knot theory

Series
School of Mathematics Colloquium
Time
Thursday, September 10, 2026 - 11:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
John EtnyreGeorgia Tech

Contact geometry has a long history, with connections to many areas of physics and mathematics. I will begin with some history and motivation for contact geometry. I will then discuss the development of contact geometry in dimension three, and the central role knot theory has played in that development. We will end by considering the beautiful structure of special knots in contact manifolds and their use in classifying contact structures on three-manifolds. 

An introduction to knot concordance

Series
Geometry Topology Student Seminar
Time
Wednesday, September 9, 2026 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Alex EldridgeGeorgia Tech

Knot concordance, in both the smooth and topological categories, is a well-studied equivalence relation on knots. We will introduce the smooth, topological, and algebraic concordance groups, and discuss several invariants that help answer questions about the structures of these groups and the relationships between them. We will also discuss the ways facts about knot concordance can be used to construct exotic pairs of 4-manifolds.

The Inner Function of the Izuchi-Ohno Type Submodule and Frames Associated with $C_0$-Semigroups

Series
Analysis Seminar
Time
Wednesday, September 9, 2026 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Victor BaileyMorehouse College

 

This is a two-part talk based on two completely separate projects. 

In the first part of this talk, we will discuss recent results on the structure of submodules in the Hardy space on the bidisk. 
The study of the structure of shift-invariant subspaces (or submodules) of the Hardy Space on the bidisk has been the subject of extensive research over the past several decades. Rudin's book, "Function Theory in Polydiscs", provides essential groundwork for the development of this area; however, still to this date we lack a complete characterization of the structure of the submodules of $H^2(\mathbb{D}^2)$ and there are not many concrete examples of inner functions in two variables representing each of the classes of inner functions detailed in his text. In 1994, Nakazi conjectured that all submodules whose shift cross commutator $[R_w, R_z^*]$ is self-adjoint are necessarily of Beurling type so that $rank[R_w, R_z^*] = 0$. A construction known as the Izuchi-Ohno type submodule establishes the existence of submodules with $[R_w, R_z^*] = [R_w, R_z^*]^*$ and $rank[R_w, R_z^*] = 1$. For $0 < |r|< 1$  there exists an inner function $\psi\in H^2(\mathbb{D}^2)$ such that  $$M = \psi \bigg(H^2(\mathbb{D}^2) \oplus \bigg( \underset{j \geq0} \bigoplus \, \mathbb{C} \cdot z^j \frac{\overline{w}}{1-rz\overline{w}} \bigg)\bigg)$$ is a submodule in $H^2(\mathbb{D}^2)$ of the Izuchi-Ohno type. The inner function's explicit construction and its properties are not given in their work; however, in this talk we will give the exact form of the inner function as well as show that all inner functions satisfying a particular property $\psi$ must also satisfy are examples of inner functions that are "not good". This is joint work with Rongwei Yang and Kelly Bickel. 
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In the second part of this talk, we will discuss recent results on continuous frames for Hilbert spaces generated by a $C_0$-semigroup. 
Due to Christensen, Hasannasab, and Philipp  we have a necessary and sufficient condition for a system $\{T^n \varphi\}_{n \in \mathbb{Z}_+}$ to be a frame, for a separable infinite-dimensional Hilbert space $H$, which exhibits the connection between frame theory and operator theory as the bounded operators $T$ that can be used to generate a frame for $H$ must be similar to a compression of the shift operator on $H^2(\mathbb{T})$ to a particular coinvariant subspace of the shift in $H^2(\mathbb{T})$. 
 Similarly, in recent work by Bailey, Han, Kornelson, Larson, and Liu it is shown that every frame representation for a countable, unital, left-cancellation semigroup $S$ must be equivalent to a compression of the left regular representation on $\ell^2(S)$ to a certain coinvariant subspace of the left regular representation in $\ell^2(S)$. 

When considering continuous frames given by a $C_0$-semigroup of operators $\{T(t)\}_{t \geq 0}$ we may ask whether a similar characterization for such frames can be obtained. Moreover, for a $C_0$-semigroup $\{T(t)\}_{t \geq 0}$, there is an associated bounded operator known as the cogenerator $C = (A+I)(A-I)^{-1}$ of the semigroup whenever $1 \notin \sigma(A)$ (where $A$ is the infinitesimal generator of the semigroup). It can be shown that $\{T(t)\varphi\}_{t \geq 0}$ is a continuous frame for $H$ if and only if $ \{C^n (A-I)^{-1}\varphi \}_{n \in \mathbb{Z}_+}$ is a discrete frame for $H$ so that studying the frame properties of the frames by iterations of the cogenerator will shed light on the frame properties of the continuous frames given by the associated semigroup $\{T(t)\}_{t \geq 0}$. In this talk, we will address the aforementioned questions as well as provide some results on frame properties of the frames obtained from iterations of operators defined in terms of the infinitesimal generator of a given $C_0$-semigroup. This is joint work with Eva Gallardo-Gutierrez and Jonathan Partington.
 

The cycle double cover conjecture

Series
Graph Theory Seminar
Time
Tuesday, September 8, 2026 - 15:45 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Richter JordaanGeorgia Tech

In July 2026, OpenAI announced a fully automated proof of the Cycle Double Cover Conjecture, solving a 50-year old problem of fundamental importance in graph theory. There are now several different non-AI expositions of this short proof. We present the proof in this seminar talk. If there is time, we may also have a short group discussion, moderated by Rose McCarty, about how AI is changing the way we approach mathematics.

Coprime mappings and lonely runners

Series
Combinatorics Seminar
Time
Friday, September 4, 2026 - 15:15 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Fei PengGeorgia Institute of Technology

For $x$ real, let $ \{ x \}$ be the fractional part of $x$ (i.e. $\{x\} = x - \lfloor x \rfloor $).  The lonely runner conjecture can be stated as follows: for any $n$ positive integers $ v_1 < v_2 < \dots < v_n $ there exists a real number $t$ such that $ 1/(n+1) \le \{ v_i t\} \le n/(n+1) $ for $ i = 1, \dots, n$.  In this paper we prove that if $ \epsilon >0 $ and $n$ is sufficiently large (relative to $\epsilon$) then such a $t$ exists for any collection of positive integers $ v_1 < v_2 < \dots < v_n$ such that $ v_n < (2-\epsilon)n$.  This is an approximate version of a natural next step for the study of the lonely runner conjecture suggested by Tao.  
    
The key ingredient in our proof is a result on coprime mappings.  Let $A$ and $B$ be sets of integers.  A bijection $ f:A \to B$ is a coprime mapping if $ a $ and $f(a)$ are coprime for every $ a \in A$. We show that if $A,B \subset [n]$ are intervals of length $2m$ where $ m = e^{ \Omega({(\log\log n)}^2)}$ then there exists a coprime mapping from $A$ to $B$. 

A Sales Pitch for Heegaard Floer Homology

Series
Geometry Topology Student Seminar
Time
Wednesday, September 2, 2026 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Owen Huang

Heegaard Floer homology is a modern algebraic package that has seen utility in many areas of low dimensional topology. In this introductory talk, we will give a birds eye view of its construction and properties, and present a highlight reel on the problems it helps solve. As many of our beloved faculty find use for Floer homology in their research, this talk intends to ease the newcomer into the vernacular they may hear in a Seminar talk, and at the same time, convince them that it is a beautiful and rich field of study. We do not assume knowledge in low dimensional topology. It is also rumoured that some Dunkin Donuts will be in attendance.

Radiative damping and dispersive decay estimates for SSH models

Series
PDE Seminar
Time
Tuesday, September 1, 2026 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Remy KassemGeorgia Tech

We study the effect of time-periodic forcing on the edge state of the semi-infinite Su–Schrieffer–Heeger (SSH) model, a 1D tight-binding model. Numerical simulations and an asymptotic expansion demonstrate that if the frequency of forcing is in resonance with the continuous spectrum of the unforced Hamiltonian, then on a time scale proportional to the inverse square of the forcing amplitude, the edge state decays in amplitude due to the radiation of its energy into the bulk. A proof is work in progress, and makes use of a new dispersive decay estimate for the time-evolution induced by the Hamiltonian. 

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