Past Seminars

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  • Number Theory
    Explicit zeta functions for a class of hyperelliptic curves
    Shuhong Gao
    Tue May 7, 2013
    2:00 pm
    In this talk, we show how to explicitly determine the zeta functions of hyperelliptic curves of the form $y^2 = x^p-ax-b$ defined over a finite field $GF(p^s}$ where $p$ is a prime. Joint work with Hui Xue and Lin You.
  • Dynamical Systems
    (Pseudo)-groups acting on the circle: towards a characterization theorem
    Victor Klepstyn
    Tue May 7, 2013
    1:00 pm
    Take a finitely-generated group of (analytic) circle diffeomorphisms. Since the times of Poincaré we know that any such action admits either a finite orbit, or a Cantor minimal set, or the action is minimal on all the circle. But what else can be said on such a group? In this direction, there are well-known questions due to Sullivan, Ghys...
  • Lee Yang Circle Theorem and the Reimann Hypothesis
    Chuck Newman
    Tue May 7, 2013
    11:00 am
    In this talk we discuss a connection between statistical mechanics and the Riemann hypothesis in number theory.
  • Applied and Computational Mathematics
    Spare Approximation via Penalty Decomposition and Iterative Hard Thresholding...
    Zhaosong Lu
    Mon May 6, 2013
    4:00 pm
    In the first part, we discuss penalty decomposition (PD) methods for solving a more general class of $l_0$ minimization in which a sequence of penalty subproblems are solved by a block coordinate descent (BCD) method. Under some suitable assumptions, we establish that any accumulation point of the sequence generated by the PD methods satisfies...
  • Logic Set Theory
    Foreman's Duality Theorem and Applications I
    Monroe Eskew
    Mon May 6, 2013
    4:00 pm
    We present a theorem of Foreman that allows an exact characterization of what happens to the structure of precipitous ideals after suitable forcing. This theorem unifies several well-known results, giving as them quick corollaries. We will use it to show: forcing precipitous ideals from large cardinals, preservation theorems of Kakuda and...
  • Graduate Seminar
    Dissipation in Composities with High-Loss and Lossles Components
    Alex Figotin
    Fri May 3, 2013
    4:00 pm
    We study the energy dissipation features of systems comprised of two components one of which is highly lossy and the other lossless. One of the principal results is that all the eigenmodes of any such system split into two distinct classes, high-loss and low-loss,according to their dissipative properties. Interestingly, this splitting is...
  • Differential Geometry
    Universal profiles for mean curvature flow neckpinches
    Dan Knopf
    Thu May 2, 2013
    4:00 pm
    We report on recent and ongoing work with Zhou Gang and I.M. Sigal in which we prove that all MCF neckpinches are asymptotically rotationally symmetric. Combined with recent work of other authors, this represents strong evidence in favor of the conjecture that MCF solutions originating from generic initial data are constrained to one of exactly...