Shear-induced chaos

Speaker: 

Henry & Lucy Moses Professor of Science Lai-Sang Young

Institution: 

Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences

Time: 

Wednesday, May 13, 2009 - 4:00pm

Location: 

RH 306

I will discuss the phenomenon of shear-induced chaos in driven dynamical systems. The unforced system is assumed to be nonchaotic with certain simple structures (such as attracting periodic orbits). Specifics of the defining equations are unimportant. A geometric mechanism for producing chaos - equivalently promoting mixing - is proposed. This mechanism involves the amplification of the effects of the forcing by shearing in the unforced system. Rigorous results establishing the presence of strange attractors will be discussed. Statistical information is deduced by comparing these attractors to countable-state Markov chains. The phenomenon of shear-induced chaos manifests itself in many different guises. Examples presented will include periodically kicked oscillators, slow-fast systems, PDEs undergoing Hopf bifurcations and coupled oscillators.

A dichotomy theorem in canonical models of AD+, and an application to Schipperus's countable-finite game

Speaker: 

Dr Andres Caicedo

Institution: 

Boise State University

Time: 

Monday, June 1, 2009 - 4:00pm

Location: 

RH 340P

This is joint work with Richard Ketchersid.

Schipperus introduced the countable-finite game in the early 1990s. It is
an infinite game played between two players relative to a set S. In the
presence of choice, it is obvious that player II has a winning strategy
for all S, and it is natural to ask whether choice can be dispensed with.

AD+ is a technical strengthening of AD introduced by Hugh Woodin. It is
open whether AD+ actually follows from AD. All known models of AD come
from certain canonical models produced by the derived model construction.

In these canonical models, we show that every set either embeds the reals
or else is well-orderable.

From this we deduce that, except for the case when S is countable, the
countable-finite game on S is undetermined in these models.

EXPLICIT CONSTRUCTION OF MODULI SPACE OF BOUNDED COMPLETE REINHARDT DOMAINS IN C^n AND HILBERT 14th PROBLEMS

Speaker: 

Professor Stephen Yau

Institution: 

University of Illinois at Chicago

Time: 

Friday, May 8, 2009 - 3:00pm

Location: 

RH 306

One of the most fundamental problems in complex
geometry is to determine when two bounded domains
in C^n are biholomorphically equivalent. Even for complete
Reinhardt domains, this fundamental problem remains unsolved
for many years. Using the Bergmann function theory,
we construct an infinite family of numerical invariants from
the Bergman functions for complete Reinhardt domains in
C^n. These infinite family of numerical invariants are actually
a complete set of invariants if the domains are pseudoconvex
with C^1 boundaries. For bounded complete Reinhardt domains
with real analytic boundaries, the complete set of numerical
invariants can be reduced dramatically although the
set is still infinite. We shall also discuss the role of the Hilbert 14th
problem in the construction of numerical biholomorphic
invariants of complete Reinhardt domains in C^n.

Stratified analyticity of the Lyapunov exponent and the global theory of one-frequency Schrodinger operators

Speaker: 

Artur Avila

Institution: 

IMPA & CNRS

Time: 

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - 2:00pm

Location: 

RH 306

We consider one-dimensional Schrodinger operator with analytic potential
and a single frequency. Two ``local theories'' for such operators have
been developed extensively, and cover small and large potentials.
However, a global picture, which should in particular describe how one
moves from a regime to the other has remained elusive except in the case
of the almost Mathieu operator.

It turns out that, as in the case of the almost Mathieu, energies in the
spectrum can be always separated into three types (subcritical, critical
and supercritical), according to the Lyapunov exponent of the
(complexified) associated cocycle. Our focus is in the study of the
critical locus in the infinite dimensional parameter space.
Our analysis gives a detailed picture for the ``phase transitions''
between subcritical and supercritical regions in the spectrum of typical
operators. One of our tools is a surprising regularity property of the
Lyapunov exponent that emerges from a quantization phenomenon.

Tunneling and return to equilibrium for Kramers-Fokker-Planck type operators

Speaker: 

Michael Hitrik

Institution: 

UCLA

Time: 

Thursday, April 30, 2009 - 2:00pm

Location: 

RH 306

For a class of second order supersymmetric differential operators,
including the Kramers-Fokker-Planck operator of kinetic theory, we
determine the semiclassical (here the low temperature) asymptotics for the
splitting between the two lowest eigenvalues, with the first one being
0. Specifically, we consider the case when the exponent of the associated
Maxwellian has precisely two local minima and one saddle
point. The splitting is then exponentially small and is related to a
tunnel effect between the minima. We also show that the rate of the return
to equilibrium for the associated heat semigroup is dictated by the first
non-vanishing eigenvalue. This is joint work with Fr\'ed\'eric H\'erau and
Johannes Sj\"ostrand.

Pages

Subscribe to UCI Mathematics RSS