Seminars and Colloquia by Series

Rational cobordisms and integral homology

Series
Geometry Topology Seminar
Time
Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Paolo Aceto – University of Oxford –

We prove that every rational homology cobordism class in the subgroup generated by lens spaces contains a unique connected sum of lens spaces whose first homology embeds in any other element in the same class. As a consequence we show that several natural maps to the rational homology cobordism group have infinite rank cokernels, and obtain a divisibility condition between the determinants of certain 2-bridge knots and other knots in the same concordance class. This is joint work with Daniele Celoria and JungHwan Park.

Introduction to KAM theory: I the basics.

Series
Dynamical Systems Working Seminar
Time
Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - 14:00 for 1.5 hours (actually 80 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Rafael de la Llave – Georgia Institute of Technology

The KAM (Kolmogorov Arnold and Moser) theory studies
the persistence of quasi-periodic solutions under perturbations.
It started from a basic set of theorems and it has grown
into a systematic theory that settles many questions. 

The basic theorem is rather surprising since it involves delicate
regularity properties of the functions considered, rather
subtle number theoretic properties of the frequency as well
as geometric properties of the dynamical systems considered.

In these lectures, we plan to cover a complete proof of
a particularly representative theorem in KAM theory.

In the first lecture we will cover all the prerequisites
(analysis, number theory and geometry). In the second lecture
we will present a complete proof of Moser's twist map theorem
(indeed a generalization to more dimensions).

The proof also lends itself to very efficient numerical algorithms.
If there is interest and energy, we will devote a third lecture
to numerical implementations. 

Flag moduli spaces and Legendrian surfaces

Series
Geometry Topology Seminar
Time
Wednesday, May 15, 2019 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skile 005
Speaker
Roger Casals – UC Davis

In this talk, I will discuss progress in our understanding of Legendrian surfaces. First, I will present a new construction of Legendrian surfaces and a direct description for their moduli space of microlocal sheaves. This Legendrian invariant will connect to classical incidence problems in algebraic geometry and the study of flag varieties, which we will study in detail. There will be several examples during the talk and, in the end, I will indicate the relation of this theory to the study of framed local systems on a surface. This talk is based on my work with E. Zaslow.

Translational scissors congruence

Series
Geometry Topology Seminar
Time
Monday, May 13, 2019 - 14:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Inna Zakharevich – Cornell

One of the classical problems in scissors congruence is
this: given two polytopes in $n$-dimensional Euclidean space, when is
it possible to decompose them into finitely many pieces which are
pairwise congruent via translations?  A complete set of invariants is
provided by the Hadwiger invariants, which measure "how much area is
pointing in each direction."  Proving that these give a complete set
of invariants is relatively straightforward, but determining the
relations between them is much more difficult.  This was done by
Dupont, in a 1982 paper. Unfortunately, this result is difficult to
describe and work with: it uses group homological techniques which
produce a highly opaque formula involving twisted coefficients and
relations in terms of uncountable sums.  In this talk we will discuss
a new perspective on Dupont's proof which, together with more
topological simplicial techniques, simplifies and clarifies the
classical results.  This talk is partially intended to be an
advertisement for simplicial techniques, and will be suitable for
graduate students and others unfamiliar with the approach.

Effects of risk-aversion and diversity of user preferences on network routing

Series
ACO Student Seminar
Time
Thursday, May 9, 2019 - 11:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
ISyE Main 228
Speaker
Evdokia Nikolova – ECE, UT Austin –

In network routing users often tradeoff different objectives in selecting their best route. An example is transportation networks, where due to uncertainty of travel times, drivers may tradeoff the average travel time versus the variance of a route. Or they might tradeoff time and cost, such as the cost paid in tolls.

We wish to understand the effect of two conflicting criteria in route selection, by studying the resulting traffic assignment (equilibrium) in the network. We investigate two perspectives of this topic: (1) How does the equilibrium cost of a risk-averse population compare to that of a risk-neutral population? (i.e., how much longer do we spend in traffic due to being risk-averse) (2) How does the equilibrium cost of a heterogeneous population compare to that of a comparable homogeneous user population?

We provide characterizations to both questions above.

Based on joint work with Richard Cole, Thanasis Lianeas and Nicolas Stier-Moses.

At the end I will mention current work of my research group on algorithms and mechanism design for power systems.

Biography: Evdokia Nikolova is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is a member of the Wireless Networking & Communications Group. Previously she was an Assistant Professor in Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University. She graduated with a BA in Applied Mathematics with Economics from Harvard University, MS in Mathematics from Cambridge University, U.K. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT.

Nikolova's research aims to improve the design and efficiency of complex systems (such as networks and electronic markets), by integrating stochastic, dynamic and economic analysis. Her recent work examines how human risk aversion transforms traditional computational models and solutions. One of her algorithms has been adapted in the MIT CarTel project for traffic-aware routing. She currently focuses on developing algorithms for risk mitigation in networks, with applications to transportation and energy. She is a recipient of an NSF CAREER award and a Google Faculty Research Award. Her research group has been recognized with a best student paper award and a best paper award runner-up. She currently serves on the editorial board of the journal Mathematics of Operations Research.

Short time solution to the master equation of a first order mean field game

Series
Dissertation Defense
Time
Friday, May 3, 2019 - 10:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Sergio Mayorga – Graduate student –

For a first order (deterministic) mean-field game with non-local running and initial couplings, a classical solution is constructed for the associated, so-called master equation, a partial differential equation in infinite-dimensional space with a non-local term, assuming the time horizon is sufficiently small and the coefficients are smooth enough, without convexity conditions on the Hamiltonian. 

Percolation Theory: The complement of the infinite cluster & The acceptance profile of the invasion percolation

Series
Dissertation Defense
Time
Thursday, May 2, 2019 - 13:30 for 1.5 hours (actually 80 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Bounghun Bock – Georgia Tech –

In independent bond percolation  with parameter p, if one removes the vertices of the infinite cluster (and incident edges), for which values of p does the remaining graph contain an infinite cluster? Grimmett-Holroyd-Kozma used the triangle condition to show that for d > 18, the set of such p contains values strictly larger than the percolation threshold pc. With the work of Fitzner-van der Hofstad, this has been reduced to d > 10. We reprove this result by showing that for d > 10 and some p>pc, there are infinite paths consisting of "shielded"' vertices --- vertices all whose adjacent edges are closed --- which must be in the complement of the infinite cluster. Using numerical values of pc, this bound can be reduced to d > 7. Our methods are elementary and do not require the triangle condition.

Invasion percolation is a stochastic growth model that follows a greedy algorithm. After assigning i.i.d. uniform random variables (weights) to all edges of d-dimensional space, the growth starts at the origin. At each step, we adjoin to the current cluster the edge of minimal weight from its boundary. In '85, Chayes-Chayes-Newman studied the "acceptance profile"' of the invasion: for a given p in [0,1], it is the ratio of the expected number of invaded edges until time n with weight in [p,p+dp] to the expected number of observed edges (those in the cluster or its boundary) with weight in the same interval. They showed that in all dimensions, the acceptance profile an(p) converges to one for ppc. In this paper, we consider an(p) at the critical point p=pc in two dimensions and show that it is bounded away from zero and one as n goes to infinity.

The Polaron Hydrogenic Atom in a Strong Magnetic Field

Series
Dissertation Defense
Time
Thursday, May 2, 2019 - 11:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Rohan Ghanta – School of Mathematics –

An electron interacting with the vibrational modes of a polar crystal is called a polaron. Polarons are the simplest Quantum Field Theory models, yet their most basic features such as the effective mass, ground-state energy and wave function cannot be evaluated explicitly. And while several successful theories have been proposed over the years to approximate the energy and effective mass of various polarons, they are built entirely on unjustified, even questionable, Ansätze for the wave function. 

In this talk I shall provide the first explicit description of the ground-state wave function of a polaron in an asymptotic regime: For the Fröhlich polaron localized in a Coulomb potential and exposed to a homogeneous magnetic field of strength $B$ it will be shown that the ground-state electron density in the direction of the magnetic field converges pointwise and in a weak sense as $B\rightarrow\infty$ to the square of a hyperbolic secant function--a sharp contrast to the Gaussian wave functions suggested in the physics literature. 

Weak Solutions of Mean Field Game Master Equations

Series
PDE Seminar
Time
Tuesday, April 30, 2019 - 15:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
skiles 006
Speaker
Chenchen Mou – UCLA –

 In this talk we study master equations arising from mean field game 
problems, under the crucial monotonicity conditions.
Classical solutions of such equations require very strong technical 
conditions. Moreover, unlike the master equations arising from mean 
field control problems, the mean field game master equations are 
non-local and even classical solutions typically do not satisfy the 
comparison principle, so the standard viscosity solution approach seems 
infeasible. We shall propose a notion of weak solution for such 
equations and establish its wellposedness. Our approach relies on a new 
smooth mollifier for functions of measures, which unfortunately does not 
keep the monotonicity property, and the stability result of master 
equations. The talk is based on a joint work with Jianfeng Zhang.

Approaching Moons in Chaotic Environments With Applications to Europa Lander

Series
CDSNS Colloquium
Time
Tuesday, April 30, 2019 - 13:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Rodney Anderson – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology –

Please Note: The unusual day

New and proposed missions for approaching moons, and particularly icy moons, increasingly require the design of trajectories within challenging multi-body environments that stress or exceed the capabilities of the two-body design methodologies typically used over the last several decades. These current methods encounter difficulties because they often require appreciable user interaction, result in trajectories that require significant amounts of propellant, or miss potential mission-enabling options. The use of dynamical systems methods applied to three-body and multi-body models provides a pathway to obtain a fuller theoretical understanding of the problem that can then result in significant improvements to trajectory design in each of these areas. The search for approach trajectories within highly nonlinear, chaotic regimes where multi-body effects dominate becomes increasingly complex, especially when landing, orbiting, or flyby scenarios must be considered in the analysis. In the case of icy moons, approach trajectories must also be tied into the broader tour which includes flybys of other moons. The tour endgame typically includes the last several flybys, or resonances, before the final approach to the moon, and these resonances further constrain the type of approach that may be used.

In this seminar, new methods for approaching moons by traversing the chaotic regions near the Lagrange point gateways will be discussed for several examples. The emphasis will be on landing trajectories approaching Europa including a global analysis of trajectories approaching any point on the surface and analyses for specific landing scenarios across a range of different energies. The constraints on the approach from the tour within the context of the endgame strategy will be given for a variety of different moons and scenarios. Specific approaches using quasiperiodic or Lissajous orbits will be shown, and general landing and orbit insertion trajectories will be placed into context relative to the invariant manifolds of unstable periodic and quasiperiodic orbits. These methods will be discussed and applied for the specific example of the Europa Lander mission concept. The Europa Lander mission concept is particularly challenging in that it requires the redesign of the approach scenario after the spacecraft has launched to accommodate landing at a wide range of potential locations on the surface. The final location would be selected based on reconnaissance from the Europa Clipper data once Europa Lander is in route. Taken as a whole, these methods will provide avenues to find both fundamentally new approach pathways and reduce cost to enable new missions.

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