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| Monday 6 |
3:10-4 pm, room 1432. Graph Theory and Combinatorics Seminar. Mark Ellingham, Vanderbilt University. Embedding complete tripartite graphs II. For several years the speaker, with Chris Stephens and Xiaoya Zha, has
been working on determining the orientable genus of complete tripartite
graphs. In this talk we describe the techniques used, including diamond
sums to construct embeddings from smaller embeddings, transition graphs to
construct embeddings algebraically, and vertex duplication to modify
surfaces to allow more vertices to be added to a graph. We will provide
some examples to show how all of these ideas can be put together to embed
complete tripartite graphs.
4:10 pm, room 1206. Faculty Meeting for tenured and tenure-track faculty. 4:10-5 pm, room 1431. NCGOA Research Training Group Seminar. Hang Wang, Vanderbilt University. Algebraic K-Theory: K_1. |
| Tuesday 7 |
3:20 pm, room 1425. Graduate Student Tea.
4:10-5 pm, room 1432. Noncommutative Geometry Seminar. Bogdan Nica, Vanderbilt University. Group actions on median spaces. I will start with a mini-survey of bounded vs. proper group actions. Then I will talk about the relation between bounded/proper actions on median spaces, and bounded/proper actions on Hilbert spaces. 4:10-5:00 pm, room 1312. Computational Analysis Seminar. Andrii Bondarenko, Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University. New asymptotic estimates for spherical designs. The equal weight quadrature formula on the sphere S^n which is exact for all polynomials of n+1 variables and of total degree t is called spherical t-design. We will consider two approaches for constructing good spherical designs for large parameters n and t, which improve essentially the previous upper bounds for minimal number of points in spherical t-design and confirm the well known conjecture of Korevaar and Meyers. We will also show the connection of this area with energy problems, lattices and group theory. 4:30-5:30 pm, room 1308. Universal Algebra and Logic Seminar. Petar Markovic, University of Novi Sad, Serbia. An Idiot's Guide to Complexity II. 7-8 pm, room 1206. Undergraduate Seminar in Mathematics. Adam Weaver, Vanderbilt University. The People Have Spoken: but what did they say? Have you ever felt like there is something not quite right about the voting system? Is it a conspiracy or something intrinsic to voting? Think you could come up with a better system? How much impact does the choice of voting system have on the outcome, anyway? We'll try to answer these questions with a mock election. We will consider some properties of an ideal voting scheme, and the possibility of achieving such an ideal. We will also discuss different ways to measure voting power. Free pizza. |
| Wednesday 8 | 4:10 pm, room 1310. Topology & Group Theory Seminar. Basak Gurel, Vanderbilt University. Leaf-wise coisotropic intersections. The Lagrangian intersection property is unquestionably one of the most fundamental results in symplectic topology. Namely, a Lagrangian submanifold necessarily intersects its image under a Hamiltonian diffeomorphism that is in some sense close to the identity. It is natural to consider generalizations of the Lagrangian intersection property to coisotropic submanifolds. Among several different versions of the coisotropic intersection property is the question of leaf-wise intersections. In this talk we will discuss our recent work on this problem which is also connected to some problems in geometric mechanics and mathematical physics. |
| Thursday 9 | 4:10-5 pm, room 5211. Colloquium. Henry Cohn, Microsoft Research, New England. Packing, energy minimization, and exceptional structures. How should one arrange a collection of charged particles so as to minimize the potential energy between them? This problem arises naturally in physics, but it extends to far more general spaces and potential functions. Almost always, the optimal configuration depends on the potential function, but in certain cases it does not; we call these universal optima. The universal optima highlight some of the remarkable exceptional structures in mathematics (such as E_8, the Leech lattice, and the 27 lines on a cubic surface). This talk will give a survey of this area. I'll outline what happens in general, what role the universal optima play, how one can prove this, and what else we conjecture. I'll also briefly discuss the inverse problem, which arises in chemistry and materials science: if we have a desired structure in mind, how can we design a force law under which it will spontaneously self-assemble? Tea at 3:30 pm in SC 1425. |
| Friday 10 | 4:10-5:30 pm, room 1310. Subfactor Seminar. Jesse Peterson, Vanderbilt University. TBA. |