## Seminars and Colloquia by Series

Wednesday, October 10, 2018 - 12:55 , Location: Skiles 006 , Josiah Park , Georgia institute of Technology , , Organizer: Galyna Livshyts

It has been known that when an equiangular tight frame (ETF) of size |Φ|=N exists, Φ ⊂ Fd (real or complex), for p > 2 the p-frame potential ∑i ≠ j | < φj, φk > |p achieves its minimum value on an ETF over all N sized collections of vectors. We are interested in minimizing a related quantity: 1/ N2 ∑i, j=1 | < φj, φk > |p . In particular we ask when there exists a configuration of vectors for which this quantity is minimized over all sized subsets of the real or complex sphere of a fixed dimension. Also of interest is the structure of minimizers over all unit vector subsets of Fd of size N. We shall present some results for p in (2, 4) along with numerical results and conjectures. Portions of this talk are based on recent work of D. Bilyk, A. Glazyrin, R. Matzke, and O. Vlasiuk.

Wednesday, October 3, 2018 - 12:55 , Location: Skiles 006 , Xingyu Zhu , Georgia Institute of Technology , , Organizer: Galyna Livshyts

The n-dimensional L^p Brunn-Minkowski inequality for p<1 , in particular the log-Brunn-Minkowski inequality, is proposed by Boroczky-Lutwak-Yang-Zhang in 2013, based on previous work of Firey and Lutwak . When it came out, it promptly became the major problem in convex geometry. Although some partial results on some specific convex sets are shown to be true, the general case stays wide open. In this talk I will present a breakthrough on this conjecture due to E. Milman and A Kolesnikov, where we can obeserve a beautiful interaction of PDE, operator theory, Riemannian geometry and all sorts of best constant estimates. They showed the validity of the local version of this inequality for orgin-symmtric convex sets with a C^{2} smooth boundary and strictly postive mean curvature, and for p between 1-c/(n^{3/2}) and 1. Their infinitesimal formulation of this inequality reveals the deep connection with the poincare-type inequalities. It turns out, after a sophisticated transformation, the desired inequality follows from an estimate of the universal constant in Poincare inequality on convex sets.

Wednesday, September 26, 2018 - 12:55 , Location: Skiles 006 , , Georgia Institute of technology , , Organizer: Galyna Livshyts

I shall tell about some background and known results in regards to the celebrated and fascinating Log-Brunn-Minkowski inequality, setting the stage for Xingyu to discuss connections with elliptiic operators a week later.

Wednesday, September 19, 2018 - 12:55 , Location: Skiles 006 , Han Huang , University of Michigan , , Organizer: Konstantin Tikhomirov

It is natural to question whether the center of mass of a convex body $K\subset \mathbb{R}^n$ lies in its John ellipsoid $B_K$, i.e., in the maximal volume ellipsoid contained in $K$. This question is relevant to the efficiency of many algorithms for convex bodies. We obtain an unexpected negative result. There exists a convex body $K\subset \mathbb{R}^n$ such that its center of mass does not lie in the John ellipsoid $B_K$ inflated $(1-o(1))n$ times about the center of $B_K$. (Yet, if one inflate $B_K$ by a factor $n$, it contains $K$.)Moreover, there exists a polytope $P \subset \mathbb{R}^n$ with $O(n^2)$ facets whose center of mass is not contained in the John ellipsoid $B_P$ inflated $O(\frac{n}{\log(n)})$ times about the center of $B_P$.

Wednesday, September 12, 2018 - 12:55 , Location: Skiles 006 , , Georgia Institute of technology , , Organizer: Galyna Livshyts

The concentration of Lipschitz functions around their expectation is a classical topic and continues to be very active. In these talks, we will discuss some recent progress in detail, including: A tight log-Sobolev inequality for isotropic logconcave densities A unified and improved large deviation inequality for convex bodies An extension of the above to Lipschitz functions (generalizing the Euclidean squared distance)The main technique of proof is a simple iteration (equivalently, a Martingale process) that gradually transforms any density into one with a Gaussian factor, for which isoperimetric inequalities are considerably easier to establish. (Warning: the talk will involve elementary calculus on the board, sometimes at an excruciatingly slow pace). Joint work with Yin Tat Lee.

Wednesday, September 5, 2018 - 12:55 , Location: Skiles 006 , , Georgia Institute of Technology , , Organizer: Galyna Livshyts

The concentration of Lipschitz functions around their expectation is a classical topic and continues to be very active. In these talks, we will discuss some recent progress in detail, including: A tight log-Sobolev inequality for isotropic logconcave densities A unified and improved large deviation inequality for convex bodies An extension of the above to Lipschitz functions (generalizing the Euclidean squared distance)The main technique of proof is a simple iteration (equivalently, a Martingale process) that gradually transforms any density into one with a Gaussian factor, for which isoperimetric inequalities are considerably easier to establish. (Warning: the talk will involve elementary calculus on the board, sometimes at an excruciatingly slow pace). Joint work with Yin Tat Lee.

Wednesday, August 29, 2018 - 12:55 , Location: Skiles 006 , Konstantin Tikhomirov , GeorgiaTech , Organizer: Konstantin Tikhomirov

We show that there is a symmetric n-dimensional convex set whose Banach--Mazur distance to the cube is bounded below by n^{5/9}/polylog(n). This improves previously know estimate due to S.Szarek, and confirms a conjecture of A.Naor. The proof is based on probabilistic arguments.