Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

We develop nanopteron solutions for a coupled system of singularly perturbed ordinary differential equations.  To leading order, one equation governs the traveling wave profile for the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation, while the other models a simple harmonic oscillator whose small mass is the problem’s natural small parameter.  A nanopteron solution consists of the superposition of an exponentially localized term and a small-amplitude periodic term.  We construct two families of nanopterons.  In the first, the periodic amplitude is fixed to be exponentially small but nonzero, and an auxiliary phase shift is introduced in the periodic term to meet a hidden solvability condition lurking within the problem.  In the second, the phase shift is fixed as a (more or less) arbitrary value, and now the periodic amplitude is selected to satisfy the solvability condition.  These constructions adapt different techniques due to Beale and Lombardi for related systems and is intended as the first step in a broader program uniting the flexible framework of Beale’s methods with the precision of Lombardi’s for applications to various problems in lattice dynamical systems.  As a more immediate application, we use the results for the model problem to solve a system of coupled KdV-KdV equations that models the propagation of certain surface water waves.

Atlanta Combinatorics Colloquium Hosted by Georgia Tech

A k-block in a graph is a set of k vertices every two of which are joined by k vertex disjoint paths. By a result of Weissauer, graphs with no k-blocks admit tree-decompositions with especially useful structure. While several constructions show that it is probably very difficult to characterize induced subgraph obstructions to bounded tree width, a lot can be said about graphs with no k-blocks. On the other hand, forbidding induced subgraphs places significant restrictions on the structure of a k-block in a graph. We will discuss this phenomenon and its consequences on the study of tree-decompositions in classes of graphs defined by forbidden induced subgraphs.

We study the Schur-Siegel-Smyth trace problem. We introduce a new linear programming problem that inclues Smyths' constraints, and we give an exact solution to it. This improves the best known lower bound on the Siegel trace problem which is based on Smyths' method. In a special case, we recover Siegel's original upper bound.  Our method unifies Siegel's and Smyth's work under the same framework. This is joint work with Bryce Orloski.

Morse theory analyzes the topology of a smooth manifold by studying the behavior of its real-valued functions. From this, one obtains a well-behaved homology theory which provides further information about the manifold and places constraints on the smooth functions it admits. This idea has proven to be useful in approaching topological problems, playing an essential role in Smale's solution to the generalized Poincare conjecture in dimensions greater than 4. Morse theory has been adapted to study complex manifolds, and even algebraic varieties over more general fields, but the underlying principles remain the same. In this talk, we will define the basic notions of Morse theory and describe some of the fundamental results. Then we will define Morse homology and discuss some important corollaries and applications.