Indifference pricing with general semimartingales

Speaker: 

Professor Marco Frittelli

Institution: 

University of Milano

Time: 

Friday, May 9, 2008 - 3:00pm

Location: 

MSTB 254

We consider a financial market where the discounted prices of the assets available for trading are modeled by semimartingales that are not assumed to be locally bounded. In this case the appropriate class of admissible integrands is defined through a random variable W that controls the losses incurred in trading. Applying the theory of Orlicz spaces, and convex analysis we study the utility maximization problem with an unbounded random endowment.

We then apply the duality relation to compute the indifference price of a claim satisfying weak integrability conditions. The indifference price leads to a convex risk measure defined on the Orlicz space associated to the utility function.

The talk is based on joint works with S. Biagini and with S. Biagini, M. Grasselli.

Existence of rough solutions to the Einstein constraint equations without CMC or near-CMC conditions

Speaker: 

Professor Mike Holst

Institution: 

UCSD

Time: 

Wednesday, June 4, 2008 - 3:00pm

Location: 

MSTB 254

There is currently tremendous interest in geometric PDE, due in
part to the geometric flow program used successfully to attack the
Poincare and Geometrization Conjectures. Geometric PDE also play
a primary role in general relativity, where the (constrained) Einstein
evolution equations describe the propagation of gravitational waves
generated by collisions of massive objects such as black holes.
The need to validate this geometric PDE model of gravity has led to
the recent construction of (very expensive) gravitational wave
detectors, such as the NSF-funded LIGO project. In this lecture, we
consider the non-dynamical subset of the Einstein equations called
the Einstein constraints; this coupled nonlinear elliptic system must
be solved numerically to produce initial data for gravitational wave
simulations, and to enforce the constraints during dynamical simulations,
as needed for LIGO and other gravitational wave modeling efforts.

The Einstein constraint equations have been studied intensively for
half a century; our focus in this lecture is on a thirty-year-old open
question involving existence of solutions to the constraint equations
on space-like hyper-surfaces with arbitrarily prescribed mean extrinsic
curvature. All known existence results have involved assuming either
constant (CMC) or nearly-constant (near-CMC) mean extrinsic curvature.
After giving a survey of known CMC and near-CMC results through 2007,
we outline a new topological fixed-point framework that is fundamentally
free of both CMC and near-CMC conditions, resting on the construction of
"global barriers" for the Hamiltonian constraint. We then present
such a barrier construction for case of closed manifolds with positive
Yamabe metrics, giving the first known existence results for arbitrarily
prescribed mean extrinsic curvature. Our results are developed in the
setting of a ``weak'' background metric, which requires building up a
set of preliminary results on general Sobolev classes and elliptic
operators on manifold with weak metrics. However, this allows us
to recover the recent ``rough'' CMC existence results of Choquet-Bruhat
(2004) and of Maxwell (2004-2006) as two distinct limiting cases of our
non-CMC results. Our non-CMC results also extend to other cases such
as compact manifolds with boundary.

Time permitting, we also outline some new abstract approximation theory
results using the weak solution theory framework for the constraints; an
application of which gives a convergence proof for adaptive finite
element methods applied to the Hamiltonian constraint.

This is joint work with Gabriel Nagy and Gantumur Tsogtgerel.

Complex Finsler Geometry and the Complex Homogeneoous Monge-Ampere Equation."

Speaker: 

Professor Pit-Mann Wong

Institution: 

University of Notre Dame

Time: 

Tuesday, May 13, 2008 - 4:00pm

Location: 

MSTB 254

The complex analogue of Diecke's Theorem and Brickell's Theorem in
real Finsler geometry. Complex Finsler structures naturally satisfy the complex
homogeneous Monge-Ampere equation and the analogue of Diecke's Theorem and
Brickell's Theorem can be put in the frame work of the classification of
complex manifolds admitting an exhaustion function satisfying the complex
homogeneous Monge-Ampere equation.

Updating an Abel-Gauss-Riemann Program

Speaker: 

Professor Mike Fried

Institution: 

Montana State U-Billings, Emeritus UCI

Time: 

Thursday, May 22, 2008 - 4:00pm

Location: 

MSTB 254

1st year calculus teachers use the equation Tp(cos(ϑ))=cos(pϑ),
with Tp(w) the pth Chebychev polynomial. It is a map between complex
spheres branched over three points. I will explain why we call Tp a
dihedral function. Functions similar to it form one Mobius class:
equivalent by composing with fractional transformations.

Abel used more general dihedral Mobius classes. These form what we
now call the modular curve Y0(p). In "What Gauss Told Riemann About
Abel's Theorem" a lecture at John Thompson's 70th Birthday,
I cited Otto Neuenschwanden on the 60-year-old Gauss in conversation
with the 20-year-old Rieman. Their goal was to generalize Abel using
Gauss' harmonic functions. Riemann went far, but his early death left
an incomplete program.

To see why the generalization is non-obvious, consider: What is the
alternating (group) version of taking composites of Tp to form Tpk+1,
k 0?

This talk will use (and explain) alternating versions of modular curves
to connect two famous modern problems:

1). The Strong Torsion Conjecture (on Abelian Varieties); and

2). The Regular Inverse Galois Problem.

These spaces have cusps at points on their boundary. A cusp pairing
(the shift-incidence matrix ) helps picture these spaces. They aren't
modular curves. Still, using a result with J.P. Serre, we show how their
cusps resemble those of modular curves. That gives a version of the
renown Merel-Mazur result for these alternating spaces.

Kolmogorov's work and similarities between chaotic and rigid dynamical systems

Speaker: 

Professor Don Ornstein

Institution: 

Stanford

Time: 

Thursday, May 29, 2008 - 4:00pm

Location: 

MSTB 254

This will be a non-technical talk. I will start by describing how Kolmogorov models dynamical systems and stationary processes so as to put them both into the same mathematical framework and some results that are made possible by this point of view.

These results lie on the chaotic side of dynamics.

On the rigid side of dynamics, I will describe the Kolmogorov-Moser twist theorem (part of KAM theory) and a generalization of that theorem.

I will discuss the very strong similarities between the stability properties of
chaotic and rigid systems.

Enumerative Geometry: from Classical to Modern

Speaker: 

Professor Aleksey Zinger

Institution: 

Stony Brook

Time: 

Thursday, February 28, 2008 - 4:00pm

Location: 

MSTB 254

The subject of enumerative geometry goes back at least to the middle
of the 19th centuary. It deals with questions of enumerating geometric
objects, e.g.
(a) how many lines pass through 2 points or
through 1 point and 2 lines in 3-space?
(b) how many conics in 2-space are tangent to k lines and
pass through 5-k points?

There has been an explosition of activity in this field over the past
twenty years, following the development of Gromov-Witten invariants in
sympletic topology and string theory. The idea of counting parameterizations
of curves in order to count curves themselves has led to solutions of
whole sets of long-standing classical problems. At the same time, string
theory has generated a multitude of predictions for the structure of
GW-invariants, as well as for the behavior of certain natural families
of Laplacians. It has in particular suggested that there is a diality
between certain symplectic and complex manifolds and that in some cases
GW-invariants see some geometric objects, that are yet to be fully
discovered mathematically.

In this talk I hope to give an indication of what enumerative geometry
is about and of the shift in the paradigm that has occured over the past
two decades.

Onsager's Conjecture and a Model for Turbulence

Speaker: 

Professor Susan Friedlander

Institution: 

USC and UIC

Time: 

Thursday, February 21, 2008 - 4:00pm

Location: 

MSTB 254

We discuss properties of a shell type model for the inviscid fluid equations. We prove that the forced system has a unique equilibrium which is an exponential global attractor. Every solution blows up in H^5/6 in finite time . After this time, all solutions stay in H^s, s

Quantum information and classical percolation

Speaker: 

Professor Janek Wehr

Institution: 

University of Arizona at Tucson

Time: 

Thursday, January 31, 2008 - 4:00pm

Location: 

MSTB 254

Sending quantum information over a distance is a challenging task and the challenge increases, if the task is to be performed several times, to send a message over a large distance. In general, this can only be done with a certain probability. On several quantum networks, a recently introduced procedure, which uses special quantum measurements, enhances this probability, as follows from the properties of related classical percolation models. ALL of the above terms will be explained in the talk, which is aimed at a general mathematical audience. While mathematically rigorous, the presented results were obtained in collaboration with a physics group and are of current physical interest, leading to a number of open problems, which will be mentioned.

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