Margaret Regan : Using homotopy continuation to solve parametrized polynomial systems in applications
- Uploaded by mregan ( 895 Views )Many problems that arise in mathematics, science, and engineering can be formulated as solving a parameterized system of polynomial equations which must be solved for given instances of the parameters. One way to solve these systems is to use a common technique within numerical algebraic geometry called homotopy continuation. My talk will start with background on homotopy continuation and parametrized polynomial systems, followed by applications to problems in computer vision and kinematics. Of these, I will first present a new approach which uses locally adaptive methods and sparse matrix calculations to solve parameterized overdetermined systems in projective space. Examples will be provided in 2D image reconstruction to compare the new methods with traditional approaches in numerical algebraic geometry. Second, I will discuss a new definition of monodromy action over the real numbers which encodes tiered characteristics regarding real solutions. Examples will be given to show the benefits of this definition over a naive extension of the monodromy group (over the complex numbers). In addition, an application in kinematics will be discussed to highlight the computational method and impact on calibration.
Robert V. Kohn : A Variational Perspective on Wrinkling Patterns in Thin Elastic Sheets: What sets the patterns seen in geometry-driven wrinkling?
- Uploaded by root ( 183 Views )The wrinkling of thin elastic sheets is very familiar: our skin
wrinkles, drapes have coarsening folds, and a sheet stretched
over a round surface must wrinkle or fold.
What kind of mathematics is relevant? The stable configurations of a
sheet are local minima of a variational problem with a rather special
structure, involving a nonconvex membrane term (which favors isometry)
and a higher-order bending term (which penalizes curvature). The bending
term is a singular perturbation; its small coefficient is the sheet
thickness squared. The patterns seen in thin sheets arise from energy
minimization -- but not in the same way that minimal surfaces arise
from area minimization. Rather, the analysis of wrinkling is an example
of "energy-driven pattern formation," in which our goal is to understand
the asymptotic character of the minimizers in a suitable limit (as the
nondimensionalized sheet thickness tends to zero).
What kind of understanding is feasible? It has been fruitful to focus
on how the minimum energy scales with sheet thickness, i.e. the "energy
scaling law." This approach entails proving upper bounds and
lower bounds that scale the same way. The upper bounds tend to be
easier, since nature gives us a hint. The lower bounds are more subtle,
since they must be ansatz-free; in many cases, the arguments used to
prove the lower bounds help explain "why" we see particular patterns.
A related but more ambitious goal is to identify the prefactor as well
as the scaling law; Ian Tobasco's striking recent work on geometry-driven
wrinkling has this character.
Lecture 1 will provide an overview of this topic (assuming no background
in elasticity, thin sheets, or the calculus of variations). Lecture 2 will
discuss some examples of tensile wrinkling, where identification of the
energy scaling law is intimately linked to understanding the local
length scale of the wrinkles. Lecture 3 will discuss our emerging
undertanding of geometry-driven wrinkling, where (as Tobasco has
shown) it is the prefactor not the scaling law that explains the
patterns seen experimentally.
Manish Mishra : Self-dual cuspidal representations
- Uploaded by schrett ( 152 Views )Let F be a non-archimedean local field (such as ℚ_p). The Langlands philosophy says that the arithmetic of F is intimately related to the category R(G) of smooth complex representations of G(F) where G denotes a reductive F-group (for example the general linear group). The building blocks of R(G) are the "supercuspidal" representations of G(F). I will define this term in the talk. The category R(G) comes equipped with an involution - the "contragradient" or the "dual". The supercuspidal representations of G(F) which are self-dual are of considerable interest in the subject. In this talk, I will talk about a joint work with Jeff Adler about the existence of supercuspidals and self-dual supercuspidals. Specifically, we show that G(F) always admits supercuspidal representations. Under some mild hypotheses on G, we determine precisely when G(F) admits self-dual supercuspidal representations. These results are obtained from analogous results for finite reductive groups which I will also talk about.
Chindu Mohanakumar : Coherent orientations of DGA maps associated to exact Lagrangian cobordisms
- Uploaded by schrett ( 45 Views )We discuss the DGA map induced by an exact Lagrangian cobordism, and an analytic strategy to lift the map to integer coefficients, introduced by Fukaya, Oh, Ohta and Ono and further adapted by Ekholm, Etnyre, and Sullivan and Karlsson respectively. We then explain how this strategy can be applied to find a concrete combinatorial formula for a mini-dipped pinch move, thereby completely determining the integral DGA maps for all decomposable, orientable Lagrangian cobordisms. If time permits, we will show how to obtain this formula in a model case. We will also go into future potential work, including applications to Heegaard Floer Homology and nonorientable cobordisms.
Casey Diekman : Data Assimilation and Dynamical Systems Analysis of Circadian Rhythmicity and Entrainment
- Uploaded by schrett ( 34 Views )Circadian rhythms are biological oscillations that align our physiology and behavior with the 24-hour environmental cycles conferred by the Earth’s rotation. In this talk, I will discuss two projects that focus on circadian clock cells in the brain and the entrainment of circadian rhythms to the light-dark cycle. Most of what we know about the electrical activity of circadian clock neurons comes from studies of nocturnal (night-active) rodents, hindering the translation of this knowledge to diurnal (day-active) humans. In the first part of the talk, we use data assimilation and patch-clamp recordings from the diurnal rodent Rhabdomys pumilio to build the first mathematical models of the electrophysiology of circadian neurons in a day-active species. We find that the electrical activity of circadian neurons is similar overall between nocturnal and diurnal rodents but that there are some interesting differences in their responses to inhibition. In the second part of the talk, we use tools from dynamical systems theory to study the reentrainment of a model of the human circadian pacemaker following perturbations that simulate jet lag. We show that the reentrainment dynamics are organized by invariant manifolds of fixed points of a 24-hour stroboscopic map and use these manifolds to explain a rapid reentrainment phenomenon that occurs under certain jet lag scenarios.