Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

In 1960, Furstenberg and Kesten introduced the problem of describing the asymptotic behavior of products of random matrices as the number of factors tends to infinity. Oseledets’ proved that such products, after normalization, converge almost surely. This theorem has wide-ranging applications to smooth ergodic theory and rigidity theory. It has been generalized to products of random operators on Banach spaces by Ruelle and others. I will explain a new infinite-dimensional generalization based on von Neumann algebra theory which accommodates continuous Lyapunov distribution. No knowledge of von Neumann algebras will be assumed. This is joint work with Ben Hayes (U. Virginia) and Yuqing Frank Lin (UT Austin, Ben-Gurion U.). 

We investigate dynamical systems obtained by coupling  an Anosov diffeomorphism and a N-pole-to-S-pole map of the circle. Both maps are uniformly hyperbolic; however, they have contrasting character, as the first one is chaotic while the second one has “orderly" dynamics. The first thing we show is that even weak coupling can produce interesting phenomena: when the attractor of the uncoupled system is not normally hyperbolic, most small interactions transform it from a smooth surface to a fractal-like set.  We then consider stronger couplings in which the action of the Anosov diffeomorphism on the circle map has certain monotonicity properties. These couplings produce genuine obstructions to uniform hyperbolicity; however, the monotonicity conditions make the system amenable to study by leveraging  techniques from the geometric and ergodic theories of hyperbolic systems.  In particular, we can show existence of invariant cones and SRB measures. 

This is joint work with Lai-Sang Young.

Delay differential equations (DDEs) are important in physical applications where there is a time lag in communication between subsystems.  From a mathematical point of view DDEs are an interesting source of problems as they provide natural examples of infinite dimensional dynamical systems.  I'll discuss some spectral numerical methods for computing invariant manifolds for DDEs and present some applications.  

Riemann's non-differentiable function, although introduced as a pathological example in analysis, makes an appearance in a certain limiting regime of the theory of binormal flow for vortex lines. From this physical point of view, it also bears some qualitative similarities to turbulent fluid velocity fields in the infinite Reynolds number limit. In this talk, we'll see how this function arises in the study of the vortex filaments, and how we can adapt the notion of intermittency from the study of turbulent flows to this setting. Then, we'll study the fine intermittent nature of this function on small scales. To do so, we define the flatness, an analytic quantity measuring it, in two different ways. One in the physical space, and the other one in the Fourier space. We prove that both expressions diverge logarithmically as the relevant scale parameter tends to 0, which highlights the (weak) intermittent nature of Riemann's function.

This is a joint work with Alexandre Boritchev (Université de Lyon) and Daniel Eceizabarrena (BCAM, Bilbao).