Many-body wave scattering by small bodies and creating materials with a desired refraction coefficient

Speaker: 

Alexander Ramm

Institution: 

Kansas State University

Time: 

Thursday, February 5, 2009 - 4:00pm

Location: 

RH 306

Many-body scattering problem is solved asymptotically when the size of the particles tends to zero and the number of the particles tends to infinity.
A method is given for calculation of the number of small particles and their boundary impedances such that embedding of these particles in a bounded domain, filled with known material, results in creating a new material with a desired refraction coefficient.
iThe new material may be created so that it has negative refraction, that is, the group velocity in this material is directed opposite to the phase velocity.
Another possible application consists of creating the new material with some desired wave-focusing properties. For example, one can create a new material which scatters plane wave mostly in a fixed given solid angle. In this application it is assumed that the incident plane wave has a fixed frequency and a fixed incident direction.
An inverse scattering problem with scattering data given at a fixed wave number and at a fixed incident direction is formulated and solved. Acoustic and electromagnetic (EM) wave scattering problems are discussed.

A.G.Ramm's vita, list of publications and some papers can be printed from the Internet address http://www.math.ksu.edu/~ramm

Can you hear the degree of a map from the circle into itself? An intriguing story which is not yet finished

Speaker: 

Haim Brezis

Institution: 

Rutgers and Technion

Time: 

Thursday, January 22, 2009 - 4:00pm

Location: 

RH 306

A few years ago -- following a suggestion by I. M. Gelfand-- I discovered an intriguing connection between the topological degree of a map from the circle into itself and its Fourier coefficients. This relation is easily
justified when the map is smooth. However, the situation turns out to be much more delicate if one assumes only continuity, or even Holder continuity.
I will present recent developments and open problems.
I will also discuss new estimates for the degree of maps from S^n into S^n, leading to unusual characterizations of Sobolev spaces.
The initial motivation for this direction of research came from the analysis of the Ginzburg-Landau model.

Can we predict turbulence and do wavelets help?

Speaker: 

Marie Farge

Institution: 

Ecole Normale Superieure Paris

Time: 

Thursday, December 4, 2008 - 4:00pm

Location: 

RH 306

Turbulence is a state of flows which is characterized by a combination of chaotic and random behaviours affecting a very large range of scales. It is governed by Navier-Stokes equations and corresponds to their solutions in the limit where the fluid viscosity becomes negligible, the nonlinearity dominant and the turbulent dissipation constant. In this regime one observes that fluctuations tend to self-organize into coherent structures which seem to have their own dynamics.

A prominent tool for multiscale decomposition are wavelets. A wavelet is a well localized oscillating smooth function, e.g. a wave packet, which is translated and dilated. The wavelet transform decomposes a flow field into scale-space contributions from which it can be reconstructed.

We will show how the wavelet transform can decompose turbulent flows into coherent and incoherent contributions presenting different statistical and dynamical properties. We will then propose a new way to analyze and predict the evolution of turbulent flows.

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The presentation will use different results obtained in collaboration with:

Kai Schneider (Universite de Provence, Marseille, France),
Naoya Okamoto, Katsunori Yoshimatsu and Yukio Kaneda (Nagoya University, Japan)

Related publications can be downloaded from the web page
http://wavelets.ens.fr

Decay of waves on black hole backgrounds

Speaker: 

Professor Daniel Tataru

Institution: 

University of California Berkeley

Time: 

Thursday, November 13, 2008 - 4:00pm

Location: 

RH 306

The Schwarzchild, respectively the Kerr space-times are solutions for the vacuum Einstein equation which model a spherically symmetric, respectively a rotating black hole. In this talk I will discuss the decay properties of solutions to the linear wave equation on
such backgrounds.

The use of the Zak transform to obtain a general setting for Gabor Systems

Speaker: 

Professor Guido Weiss

Institution: 

Washington University

Time: 

Thursday, March 12, 2009 - 4:00pm

Location: 

RH 306

Suppose g is a square integrable function on the real line. The principal shift invariant space, , generated by g is the closure of the span of the system
B ={g(.-k): k an integer}. These spaces are most important in many areas of Analysis. This is particulrly true in the theory of Wavelets. We begin by describing a very simple method for obtaining the basic properties of and the systems B.
The systems obtained by applying, in addition to the integral translations, also the integral modulations (these are the multiplication of a function by exp(-2pinx)) are known as the Gabor systems. By using the Zak transform we show how the same methods can be used to study the basic properties of the Gabor systems and their span.
We will define the Zak transform and explain all this
in a very simple way that will be easily understood by all who know only a "smidgeon" of mathematics. A bit more challenging will be the explanation how all this can be extended to general locally compact abelian groups and their duals.
This is joint work with E. Hernandez, H. Sikic and E. N.
Wilson.

Parallel Adaptive Methods and Domain Decomposition

Speaker: 

Professor Randolph Bank

Institution: 

University of California, San Diego

Time: 

Thursday, November 6, 2008 - 4:00pm

Location: 

RH 306

We discuss a parallel adaptive meshing strategy due to Bank
and Holst. The main features are low communication costs,
a simple load balancing procedure, and the ability to
develop parallel solvers from sequential adaptive
solvers with little additional coding.
In this talk we will discuss some recent developments,
including variants of the basic adaptive paradigm,
improvements in the adaptive refinement algorithm itself,
and a domain decomposition linear equations solver
based on the same principles.

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