Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

Khovanov homology is an invariant of oriented links, that is defined as the cohomology of a chain complex built from the cube of resolutions of a link diagram. Discovered in the late 90s, it is the first of, and inspiration for, a series of "categorifications" of knot invariants. In this first of two one-hour talks, I'll give some background on categorification and the Jones polynomial, defineKhovanov homology, work through some examples, and give a portion of the proof of Reidemeister invariance.

We look at problems of scheduling jobs to machines when the processing time of a job is machine dependent. Common objectives in this framework are to minimize the maximum load on a machine, or to minimize the average completion time of jobs. These are well-studied problems. We consider the related problem of trying to select a subset of machines to use to minimize machine costs subject to bounds on the maximum load or average completion time of the corresponding schedule. These problems are NP-hard and include set-cover as a special case. Thus we focus on approximation algorithms and get tight, or almost tight approximation guarantees. A key part of our results depends on showing the submodularity of the objective of a related optimization problem.

This thesis addresses four topics in the area of applied harmonic analysis. First, we show that the affine densities of separable wavelet frames affect the frame properties. In particular, we describe a new relationship between the affine densities, frame bounds and weighted admissibility constants of the mother wavelets of pairs of separable wavelet frames. This result is also extended to wavelet frame sequences. Second, we consider affine pseudodifferential operators, generalizations of pseudodifferential operators that model wideband wireless communication channels. We find two classes of Banach spaces, characterized by wavelet and ridgelet transforms, so that inclusion of the kernel and symbol in appropriate spaces ensures the operator if Schatten p-class. Third, we examine the Schatten class properties of pseudodifferential operators. Using Gabor frame techniques, we show that if the kernel of a pseudodifferential operator lies in a particular mixed modulation space, then the operator is Schatten p-class. This result improves existing theorems and is sharp in the sense that larger mixed modulation spaces yield operators that are not Schatten class. The implications of this result for the Kohn-Nirenberg symbol of a pseudodifferential operator are also described. Lastly, Fourier integral operators are analyzed with Gabor frame techniques. We show that, given a certain smoothness in the phase function of a Fourier integral operator, the inclusion of the symbol in appropriate mixed modulation spaces is sufficient to guarantee that the operator is Schatten p-class.

I will consider a class of mathematical models of decision making. These models are based on dynamics in the neighborhood of unstable equilibria and involve random perturbations due to small noise. I will report results on the vanishing noise limit for these systems, providing precise predictions about the statistics of decision making times and sequences of unstable equilibria visited by the process. Mathematically, the results are based on the analysis of random Poincare maps in the neighborhood of each equilibrium point. I will also discuss some experimental data.