The Mathematics Department holds regular seminars on a variety of topics. Please see below for further details.

Seminars

Seminar Meeting Details Title & Abstract
Algebra Seminar
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MSB 110
Epsilon Multiplicity is a Limit of Amao Multiplicities

In a 2014 paper, Cutkosky proved a volume equals multiplicity formula for the multiplicity of an m_R-primary ideal. We will discuss a generalization of this result to the epsilon multiplicity.

Speaker: Stephen Landsittel, MU
Differential Equations Seminar
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MSB 111
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Workspace management for robotics

The problem is to limit the motion of a robot so that if it is commanded to work outside of its workspace, then the robot experiences a graceful degradation of performance depending upon the extent of the workspace violation.  This is demonstrated with Stewart tables, which provide six degrees of freedom. This research is used by NASA in creating a simulator for a lunar terrain vehicle. This is real applied mathematics, showcasing ODEs, the Lie group SE(3), and its Lie algebra se(3).

Speaker: Stephen Montgomery-Smith (MU)
Algebra Seminar
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110 MSB
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Topics in Ramification Theory

I will give an overview on results about the higher ramification theory of finite Galois extensions, mainly, but not only, those of prime degree, for arbitrary valuations. I willtalk about ramification groups, ramification ideals, ramification jumps, norms and traces of these ideals, Kähler differentials and their annihilators, and Dedekind differents. Several of these objects are used for the classification of defects of Galois defect extensions of prime degree. This in turn is used to prove results about the class of deeply ramified fields, which also contains the perfectoid fields.


 

Speaker: Franz Viktor Kuhlmann, University of Szczecin
Analysis Seminar
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Math Sci 111 - Zoom (Hybrid talk)
Quiver Brascamp–Lieb inequalities

The Brascamp–Lieb inequalities are an important family of inequalities in analysis that subsumes several inequalities significant in their own right, including Hölder’s inequality, Young’s inequality, and the Loomis–Whitney inequality. Several variants and extensions of these inequalities have been developed, some of which have proved to be very useful in contemporary harmonic analysis. In this talk, we will discuss the formulation of generalized Brascamp–Lieb inequalities for algebraic objects known as quivers, building on the recent work of Chindris and Derksen on the representation theory of quivers. No prior knowledge of Brascamp–Lieb inequalities or quivers will be assumed.

Speaker: Nicholas Hu
Analysis Seminar
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Math Sci 111
How often centroids of sections coincide with centroid of a convex body?

In 1961, Grunbaum asked whether the centroid $c(K)$ of a convex body $K$ is the centroid of at least $n + 1$ different $(n − 1)$-dimensional sections of $K$ through $c(K)$. A few years later, Loewner asked to find the minimum number of hyperplane sections of $K$ passing through $c(K)$ whose centroid is the same as $c(K)$.

We give an answer to these questions for $n \geq 5$. In particular, we construct a convex body which has only one section whose centroid coincides with the centroid of the body. Joint work with S. Myroshnychenko and V. Yaskin.

Speaker: Kateryna Tatarko (University of Waterloo)
Analysis Seminar
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Math Sci 111
An extremal position for log-concave functions

An origin-symmetric convex body $K$ in $\mathbb{R}^n$ is said to be in the John position if the maximal volume ellipsoid contained in it is the Euclidean ball. One of the most celebrated theorems in geometric functional analysis is John's theorem, which says that if a convex body $K$ is in John position, then there are a collection of points $u_1,\dots u_m \in S^{n-1} \cap \partial K$ and positive scalars $c_1,\dots, c_m$ for which $I_n = \sum_{j=1}^m c_j u_j \otimes u_j$, where $I_n$ is the identity operator in $\mathbb{R}^n$.  This theorem has numerous consequences such as an estimate for the Banach-Mazur distance to Euclidean space  and the reverse isoperimetric inequality due to Ball. 

Recently, much attention has been given to translating notions from convex geometry and geometric functional analysis to the world of log-concave functions.  In particular, over the last 10 years, extensions of these celebrated theorems (in some forms) have been translated to the world of log-concave functions.

In this talk, we focus on a complementary set of positions, called "maximal-intersection positions," originally introduced by Artstein-Avidan and Katzin in 2016. This collection of position includes the John (and its dual the Lowner position) as particular cases.  The extension of this notion to the world of functions is seen through the following extremal problem for the convolution of a pair of functions: given a pair of integrable log-concave functions $f$ and $g$, find

$\sup_{(T,b) \in SL_n(\mathbb{R}) \times \mathbb{R^n}} \int f(x) g(T^{-1}x-T^{-1}b)dx.$

This is based on a joint work with Steven Hoehner. 

Speaker: Michael Roysdon (Case Western)
Analysis Seminar
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Math Sci 111
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On regularity of elliptic and parabolic PDEs in double divergence form.

We consider an elliptic operator, double divergence form operator L*, which is the formal adjoint of the elliptic operator in non-divergence from L. An important example of a double divergence form equation is the stationary Kolmogorov equation for invariant measures of a diffusion process. We are concerned with the regularity of weak solutions of L*u=0.

We will also discuss some applications and parabolic counterparts.

Speaker: Seick Kim (Yonsei University, S. Korea)
Differential Equations Seminar
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MSB 111
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Existence theorems for highly deformable elastic surfaces

An elastic surface resists not only changes in curvature but also tangential stretches and shears.  In classical plate and shell theories, e.g., due to von Karman, the latter two strain measures are approximated infinitesimally.  We motivate our approach via the phenomenon of wrinkling in highly stretched elastomers.  We postulate a novel, physically reasonable class of stored-energy densities, and we prove various existence theorems based on the direct method of the calculus of variations.

Speaker: Timothy J. Healey (Cornell)
Differential Equations Seminar
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place
MSB 111
group
Eigenvalues and resonances of Schrödinger operators near 0 in dimension 2

We compute asymptotics of  eigenvalues approaching the bottom of the continuous spectrum, and associated resonances, for Schrödinger operators in dimension two for which the potential depends on a parameter.  We distinguish persistent eigenvalues, which have associated resonances,  from disappearing ones, which do not.  We illustrate the significance of this distinction by computing corresponding scattering phase asymptotics and numerical Breit--Wigner peaks.  While we concentrate on the case of the circular well for 
illustrative and computational purposes, we also prove some of our results for more general potentials, using recent results on low-energy resonance expansions.

This talk is based on joint work with Kiril Datchev and Colton Griffin,  and is part of a larger project with K. Datchev.

Speaker: Tanya Christiansen (MU)
Analysis Seminar
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place
Math Sci 111
The Kato square root problem for operators in non-divergence form

In the 1960's, T. Kato posed a conjecture about finding the domain and some crucial estimates for the square root of elliptic partial differential operators in divergence form. The question attracted lots of interest because of the applications that it would have, and it turned out to be fairly tough to prove: only after around 40 years and joint efforts from different areas in Analysis (mainly PDE, Functional Analysis and Harmonic Analysis), it was finally solved by Auscher, Hofmann, Lacey, McIntosh and Tchamitchian in 2002.

In this talk, we will illustrate the main changes and new difficulties that arise if we want to solve Kato's problem for operators in non-divergence form instead. We will present a partial solution of the problem which already faces, at least to some extent, some of the difficulties inherent in the non-divergence setting, like the lack of symmetry of the operator and the need to use weights. This is a joint work with L. Escauriaza and S. Hofmann.

Speaker: Pablo Hidalgo (ICMAT, Madrid)