Past

What should you expect in intercollegiate classes?  What can you do to get the most out of them?  In this session, experienced class tutors will share their thoughts, and a current student will offer tips and advice based on their experience.

All undergraduate and masters students welcome, especially Part B and MSc students attending intercollegiate classes. (Students who attended the Part C/OMMS induction event will find significant overlap between the advice offered there and this session!)

In this talk, I will discuss my joint paper with Olivier Biquard and Paul Gauduchon on ALF Ricci-flat Riemannian  4-manifolds. My collaborators had previously classified all such spaces that are toric and Hermitian, but not Kaehler. Our main result uses an open curvature condition to prove a rigidity result of the following type: any Ricci-flat metric that is sufficiently close to a non-Kaehler, toric, Hermitian ALF solution (with respect to a norm that imposes reasonable fall-off at infinity) is actually  one of the  known Hermitian toric  solutions. 
 

Extra-chromosomal DNA (ecDNA) is a genetic error found in more than 30% of tumour samples across various cancer types. It is a key driver of oncogene amplification promoting tumour progression and therapeutic resistance, and is correlated to the worse clinical outcomes. Different from chromosomal DNA where genetic materials are on average equally divided to daughter cells controlled by centromeres during mitosis, the segregation of ecDNA copies is random partition and leads to a fast accumulation of cell-to-cell heterogeneity in copy numbers.  I will present our analytical and computational modeling of ecDNA dynamics under random segregation, examining the impact of copy-number-dependent versus -independent fitness, as well as the maintenance and de-mixing of multiple ecDNA species or variants within single cells. By integrating experimental and clinical data, our results demonstrate that ecDNA is not merely a by-product but a driving force in tumor progression. Intra-tumor heterogeneity exists not only in copy number but also in genetic and phenotypic diversity. Furthermore, ecDNA fitness can be copy-number dependent, which has significant implications for treatment.

We study  dynamic 𝑁-player noncooperative games called 𝛼-potential games, where the change of a player’s objective function upon her unilateral deviation from her strategy is equal to the change of an 𝛼-potential function up to an error 𝛼. Analogous to the static potential game (which corresponds to 𝛼=0), the 𝛼-potential game framework is shown to reduce the challenging task of finding 𝛼-Nash equilibria for a dynamic game to minimizing the 𝛼-potential function. Moreover, an analytical characterization of 𝛼-potential functions is established, with 𝛼 represented in terms of the magnitude of the asymmetry of objective functions’ second-order derivatives. For stochastic differential games in which the state dynamic is a controlled diffusion, 𝛼 is characterized in terms of the number of players, the choice of admissible strategies, and the intensity of interactions and the level of heterogeneity among players. Two classes of stochastic differential games, namely, distributed games and games with mean field interactions, are analyzed to highlight the dependence of 𝛼 on general game characteristics that are beyond the mean field paradigm, which focuses on the limit of 𝑁 with homogeneous players. To analyze the 𝛼-NE (Nash equilibrium), the associated optimization problem is embedded into a conditional McKean–Vlasov control problem. A verification theorem is established to construct 𝛼-NE based on solutions to an infinite-dimensional Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation, which is reduced to a system of ordinary differential equations for linear-quadratic games.

The cohomology of Shimura varieties plays an important role in Langlands program, serving as a link between automorphic forms and Galois representations. In this talk, we prove a vanishing result for the cohomology of Shimura varieties of abelian type with torsion coefficients, generalizing the previous results of Caraiani-Scholze, Koshikawa, Hamann-Lee, and others. Our proofs utilize the unipotent categorical local Langlands correspondence developed by Zhu and the Igusa stacks constructed by Daniels-van Hoften-Kim-Zhang. This is a joint work with Xinwen Zhu.

The organisers asked me to give a brief talk on what I’ve been thinking about lately. So, I’ll tell you about Schwinger-Keldysh EFTs: an EFT framework for non-equilibrium dissipative systems such as hydrodynamics. These are built on a closed-time contour that runs forward and backward in time, allowing access to a variety of non-equilibrium observables. However, these EFTs fundamentally miss a wider class of observables, called out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs), which are closely tied to quantum chaos. In this talk, I’ll share some thoughts on extending Schwinger-Keldysh EFTs to multifold contours that capture such observables. I’ll also touch on the discrete KMS symmetry of thermal systems, which generalises from Z_2 in the single-fold case to the dihedral group D_n in the n-fold case. With any luck, I’ll reach the point where I’m stuck and you can help me figure it out.

 The talk will present the open-source convex optimisation solver Clarabel, an interior-point based solver that uses a novel homogeneous embedding technique offering substantially faster solve times relative to existing open-source and commercial interior-point solvers for some problem types. This improvement is due to both a reduction in the number of required interior point iterations as well as an improvement in both the size and sparsity of the linear system that must be solved at each iteration. For large-scale problems we employ a variety of additional techniques to accelerate solve times, including chordal decomposition methods, GPU sub-solvers, and custom handling of certain specialised cones. The talk will describe details of our implementation and show performance results with respect to solvers based on the standard homogeneous self-dual embedding.

This talk is hosted by Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and will take place @ Harwell Campus, Didcot, OX11 0QX

We propose a new framework of Markov α-potential games to study Markov games. 

We show that any Markov game with finite-state and finite-action is a Markov α-potential game, and establish the existence of an associated α-potential function. Any optimizer of an α-potential function is shown to be an α-stationary Nash equilibrium. We study two important classes of practically significant Markov games, Markov congestion games and the perturbed Markov team games, via the framework of Markov α-potential games, with explicit characterization of an upper bound for αand its relation to game parameters. 

Additionally, we provide a semi-infinite linear programming based formulation to obtain an upper bound for α for any Markov game. 

Furthermore, we study two equilibrium approximation algorithms, namely the projected gradient- ascent algorithm and the sequential maximum improvement algorithm, along with their Nash regret analysis.

This talk is part of the Erlangen AI Hub.

The typical energy estimate for the Navier-Stokes equations provides a bound for the gradient of the velocity; energy-stable numerical methods that preserve this estimate preserve this bound. However, the bound scales with the Reynolds number (Re) causing solutions to be numerically unstable (i.e. exhibit spurious oscillations) on under-resolved meshes. The dissipation of enstrophy on the other hand provides, in the transient 2D case, a bound for the gradient that is independent of Re.

We propose a finite-element integrator for the Navier-Stokes equations that preserves the evolution of both the energy and enstrophy, implying gradient bounds that are, in the 2D case, independent of Re. Our scheme is a mixed velocity-vorticity discretisation, making use of a discrete Stokes complex. While we introduce an auxiliary vorticity in the discretisation, the energy- and enstrophy-stability results both hold on the primal variable, the velocity; our scheme thus exhibits greater numerical stability at large Re than traditional methods.

We conclude with a demonstration of numerical results, and a discussion of the existence and uniqueness of solutions.

 I will present a new framework for determining effectively the spectrum and stability of traveling waves on networks with symmetries, such as rings and lattices, by computing master stability curves (MSCs). Unlike traditional methods, MSCs are independent of system size and can be readily used to assess wave destabilization and multi-stability in small and large networks.

Join us for the inaugural session of Mathematrix book club! Have you heard that office workplaces often have the thermostat set at a temperature that is too cold for women to work comfortably? This month we will be discussing the academic articles behind concepts that often come up in conversations about gender inequality in the workplace. The goal of book club is to develop an evidence-based understanding of diversity in mathematics and academia. 

Just as parallel threebranes on a smooth manifold are related to string theory on AdS_5 \times S^5, parallel threebranes near a conical singularity are related to string theory on AdS_5 \times X_5 for a suitable X_5. For the example of the conifold singularity Klebanov and Witten conjectured that a string theory on AdS_5 \times X^5 can be described by a certain \mathcal{N}=1 supersymmetric gauge theory. Based primarily on their work (arXiv:hep-th/9807080), I describe the gravitational setup of this correspondence as well as their construction of the field theory, allowing for various checks of the duality.

Junior Strings is a seminar series where DPhil students present topics of common interest that do not necessarily overlap with their own research area. This is primarily aimed at PhD students and post-docs but everyone is welcome.

I will report on recent progress on influential conjectures from the 1970s and 1980s (Berry-Tabor, Bohigas-Giannoni-Schmit), which suggest that the spectral statistics of the Laplace-Beltrami operator on a given compact Riemannian manifold should be described either by a Poisson point process or by a random matrix ensemble, depending on whether the  geodesic flow is integrable or “chaotic”. This talk will straddle aspects of analysis, geometry, probability, number theory and ergodic theory, and should be accessible to a broad audience. The two most recent results presented in this lecture were obtained in collaboration with Laura Monk and with Wooyeon Kim and Matthew Welsh. 

I will report on recent progress on influential conjectures from the 1970s and 1980s (Berry-Tabor, Bohigas-Giannoni-Schmit), which suggest that the spectral statistics of the Laplace-Beltrami operator on a given compact Riemannian manifold should be described either by a Poisson point process or by a random matrix ensemble, depending on whether the  geodesic flow is integrable or “chaotic”. This talk will straddle aspects of analysis, geometry, probability, number theory and ergodic theory, and should be accessible to a broad audience. The two most recent results presented in this lecture were obtained in collaboration with Laura Monk and with Wooyeon Kim and Matthew Welsh. 

Groupoids provide a rich supply of C*-algebras, and there are many results describing the structure of these C*-algebras using properties of the underlying groupoid. For non-Hausdorff groupoids, less is known, largely due to the existence of 'singular' functions in the reduced C*-algebra. This talk will discuss two approaches to studying ideals in non-Hausdorff groupoid C*-algebras. The first uses Timmermann's Hausdorff cover to reduce certain problems to the setting of Hausdorff groupoids. The second will restrict to isotropy groups. For amenable second-countable étale groupoids, these techniques allow us to characterise when the ideal of singular functions has dense intersection with the underlying groupoid *-algebra. This is based on joint work with K. A. Brix, J. B. Hume, and X. Li, as well as upcoming work with J. B. Hume.

Using novel arguments as well as techniques developed over the last  twenty years to study mean field games, in this paper (i) we investigate the optimal control of the Dyson equation, which is the mean field equation for the so-called Dyson Brownian motion, that is, the stochastic particle system satisfied by the eigenvalues of large random matrices, (ii) we establish the well-posedness of the resulting infinite dimensional Hamilton-Jacobi equation, 
(iii) we provide a complete and direct proof for the large deviations for the spectrum of large random matrices, and (iv) we study the asymptotic behavior of the transition probabilities of the Dyson Brownian motion.  Joint work with Charles Bertucci and Pierre-Louis Lions.

Permutons are a framework set up for understanding large permutations, and are instrumental in pattern densities. However, they miss most of the algebraic properties of permutations. I will discuss what can still be said in this direction, and some possible ways to move beyond permutons. Joint with Fiona Skerman and Peter Winkler.

The question of profinite rigidity asks whether the isomorphism type of a group Γ can be recovered entirely from its finite quotients. In this talk, I will introduce the study of profinite rigidity in a different setting: the category of modules over a Noetherian domain Λ. I will explore properties of Λ-modules that can be detected in finite quotients and present two profinite rigidity theorems: one for free Λ-modules under a weak homological assumption on Λ, and another for all Λ-modules in the case when Λ is a Dedekind domain. Returning to groups, I will explain how these algebraic results yield new answers to profinite rigidity for certain classes of solvable groups. Time permitting, I will conclude with a sketch of future directions and ongoing collaborations that push these ideas further.

In recent years, there has been increasing evidence for a geometric representation of quantum chaos within Einstein's theory of general relativity. Despite the lack of a complete theoretical framework, this overview will explore various examples of this phenomenon. It will also discuss the lessons we have learned from it to address several existing puzzles in quantum gravity, such as the black hole information paradox and off-shell wormhole geometries.

The electrochemical processes in electrolytic cells are the basis for modern energy technology such as batteries. Electrolytic cells consist of an electrolyte (an salt dissolved in solution), two electrodes, and a battery. The Poisson–Nernst–Planck equations are the simplest mathematical model of steady state ionic transport in an electrolytic cell. We find the matched asymptotic solutions for the ionic concentrations and electric potential inside the electrolytic cell with mass conservation and known flux boundary conditions. The mass conservation condition necessitates solving for a higher order solution in the outer region. Our results provide insight into the behaviour of an electrochemical system with a known voltage and current, which are both experimentally measurable quantities.

Mathematical modelling and stochastic optimization are often based on the separation of two stages: At the first stage, a model is selected out of a family of plausible models and at the second stage, a policy is chosen that optimizes an underlying objective as if the chosen model were correct. In this talk, I will introduce a new approach which, rather than completely isolating the two stages, interlinks them dynamically. I will first introduce the notion of “consequential performance” of each  model and, in turn, propose a “consequentialist criterion for model selection” based on the expected utility of consequential performances. I will apply the approach to continuous-time portfolio selection and derive a key system of coupled PDEs and solve it for representative cases. I will, also, discuss the connection of the new approach with the popular methods of robust control and of unbiased estimators.   This is joint work with M. Strub (U. of Warwick)

 In the first part of the talk, after revisiting some classical models for dilute polymeric fluids, we show that thermodynamically 
consistent models for non-isothermal flows of such fluids can be derived in a very elementary manner. Our approach is based on identifying the 
energy storage mechanisms and entropy production mechanisms in the fluid of interest, which in turn leads to explicit formulae for the Cauchy 
stress tensor and for all the fluxes involved. Having identified these mechanisms, we first derive the governing system of nonlinear partial 
differential equations coupling the unsteady incompressible temperature-dependent Navier–Stokes equations with a 
temperature-dependent generalization of the classical Fokker–Planck equation and an evolution equation for the internal energy. We then 
illustrate the potential use of the thermodynamic basis on a rudimentary stability analysis—specifically, the finite-amplitude (nonlinear) 
stability of a stationary spatially homogeneous state in a thermodynamically isolated system.

In the second part of the talk, we show that sequences of smooth solutions to the initial–boundary-value problem, which satisfy the 
underlying energy/entropy estimates (and their consequences in connection with the governing system of PDEs), converge to weak 
solutions that satisfy a renormalized entropy inequality. The talk is based on joint results with Miroslav Bulíček, Mark Dostalík, Vít Průša 
and Endré Süli.

Brenier’s theorem and its Benamou-Brenier variant play a pivotal role
in optimal transport theory. In the context of martingale transport
there is a perfect analogue, termed stretched Brownian motion. We
show that under a natural irreducibility condition this leads to the
notion of Bass martingales.
For given probability measures µ and ν on Rn in convex order, the
Bass martingale is induced by a probability measure α. It is the min-
imizer of a convex functional, called the Bass functional. This implies
that α can be found via gradient descent. We compare our approach
to the martingale Sinkhorn algorithm introduced in dimension one by
Conze and Henry-Labordere.

A Riemannian metric is said to be  Einstein if it has constant Ricci curvature. In dimensions 2 or 3, this is actually equivalent to requiring the metric to have constant sectional curvature. However,  in dimensions 4 and higher, the Einstein condition becomes significantly weaker than constant sectional curvature, and this has rather dramatic consequences. In particular, it turns out that there are  high-dimensional smooth closed manifolds that admit pairs of Einstein metrics with Ricci curvatures of opposite signs. After explaining how one constructs such examples, I will then discuss some recent results exploring the coexistence of Einstein metrics with zero and positive Ricci curvatures.

Join bestselling author Simon Singh and Oxford mathematician turned educator Junaid Mubeen for a session on maths communication! Learn how to present mathematics in a way that is both accessible and engaging, and how to apply these principles in a teaching context. Simon and Junaid will draw on their experiences in the Parallel Academy https://parallel.org.uk, an online initiative they set up in 2023, which has since grown to support thousands of keen and talented students to pursue maths beyond the curriculum. 

Studying the topology of zero sets of maps is a central topic in many areas of mathematics. Classical homological invariants, such as Betti numbers, are not always suitable for this purpose due to the fact that they do not distinguish between topological features of different sizes. Topological data analysis provides a way to study topology coarsely by ignoring small-scale features. This approach yields generalizations of a number of classical theorems, such as Bézout's theorem and Courant’s nodal domain theorem, to a wider class of maps. We will explain this circle of ideas and discuss potential directions for future research. The talk is partially based on joint works with L. Buhovsky, J. Payette, I. Polterovich, L. Polterovich and E. Shelukhin.

Join us for an initial welcome pizza lunch to start the academic year to learn about what's happening in Mathematrix in 2025/26! Meet other students who are from underrepresented groups in mathematics and allies :) 

Please RSVP here to confirm your spot: https://form.jotform.com/252814345456864

Entanglement entropy has long served as a key diagnostic of topological order in (2+1) dimensions. In particular, the topological entanglement entropy captures a universal quantity (the total quantum dimension) of the underlying topological order. However, this information alone does not uniquely determine which topological order is realized, indicating the need for more refined probes. In this talk, I will present a family of quantities formulated as multi-entropy measures, including examples such as reflected entropy and the modular commutator. Unlike the conventional bipartite setting of topological entanglement entropy, these multi-entropy measures are defined for tripartite partitions of the Hilbert space and capture genuinely multipartite entanglement. I will discuss how these measures encode additional universal data characterizing topologically ordered ground states.

Please register for the event via https://sites.google.com/view/oxwmathbio2025

The problem of integration in finite terms is the problem of finding exact closed forms for antiderivatives of functions, within a given class of functions. Liouville introduced his elementary functions (built from polynomials, exponentials, logarithms and trigonometric functions) and gave a solution to the problem for that class, nearly 200 years ago. The same problem was shown to be decidable and an algorithm given by Risch in 1969.

We introduce the class of exponentially-algebraic functions, generalising the elementary functions and much more robust than them, and give characterisations of them both in terms of o-minimal local definability and in terms of their types in a reduct of the theory of differentially closed fields.

We then prove the analogue of Liouville's theorem for these exponentially-algebraic functions and give some new decidability results.

This is joint work with Rémi Jaoui, Lyon

Understanding the relationship between expectation and price is central to applications of mathematical finance, including algorithmic trading, derivative pricing and hedging, and the modelling of margin and capital. In this presentation, the link is established via dynamic entropic risk optimisation, which is promoted for its convenient integration into standard pricing methodologies and for its ability to quantify and analyse model risk. As an example of the versatility of entropic pricing, discrete models with classical and quantum information are compared, with studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of quantum decorrelation for model fitting.

Two different, almost orthogonal approaches to QFT are: (1) the study of von Neumann algebras of local observables in flat space, and (2) the study of extended and topological defects in general spacetime manifolds. While naively the two focus on different aspects, it has been recently pointed out that some of the axioms of approach (1) clash with certain expectations from approach (2). In this JC talk, I’ll give a brief introduction to both approaches and review the recent discussion in [2008.11748], [2503.20863], and [2509.03589], explaining (i) what the tensions are, (ii) a recent proposal to solve them, and (iii) why it can be useful.

The Whitney forms on a simplicial triangulation are piecewise affine differential forms that are dual to integration over chains.  The so-called blow-up Whitney forms are piecewise rational generalizations of the Whitney forms.  These differential forms, which are also called shadow forms, were first introduced by Brasselet, Goresky, and MacPherson in the 1990s.  The blow-up Whitney forms exhibit singular behavior on the boundary of the simplex, and they appear to be well-suited for constructing certain novel finite element spaces, like tangentially- and normally-continuous vector fields on triangulated surfaces.  This talk will discuss the blow-up Whitney forms, their properties, and their applicability to PDEs like the Bochner Laplace problem.  

The nematic Helmholtz-Korteweg equation is a fourth-order scalar PDE modelling time-harmonic acoustic waves in nematic Korteweg fluids, such as nematic liquid crystals. Conforming discretizations typically require C1-conforming elements, for example the Argyris element, whose implementation is notoriously challenging - especially in three dimensions - and often demands a high polynomial degree. 
In this talk, we consider an alternative non-conforming C0-hybrid interior penalty method that is both stable and convergent for any polynomial degree greater than two. Classical C0-interior penalty methods employ an H1-conforming subspace and treat the non-conformity with respect to H2 with discontinuous Galerkin techniques. Building on this idea, we use hybridization techniques to improve the computational efficiency of the discretization. We provide a brief overview of the numerical analysis and show numerical examples, demonstrating the method's ability to capture anisotropic propagation of sound in two and three dimensions. 

For $\ell$ an odd prime number and $d$ a squarefree integer, a notable problem in arithmetic statistics is to give pointwise bounds for the size of the $\ell$-torsion of the class group of $\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{d})$. This is in general a difficult problem, and unconditional pointwise bounds are only available for $\ell = 3$ due to work of Pierce, Helfgott—Venkatesh and Ellenberg—Venkatesh. The current record due to Ellenberg—Venkatesh is $h_3(d) \ll_\epsilon d^{1/3 + \epsilon}$. We will discuss how to improve this to $h_3(d) \ll d^{0.32}$. This is joint work with Peter Koymans.

Let \( G = \exp(\mathfrak{g}) \) be a connected, simply connected nilpotent Lie group with Lie algebra \( \mathfrak{g} \), and let \( H = \exp(\mathfrak{h}) \) be a closed subgroup with Lie algebra \( \mathfrak{h} \). Consider a unitary character \( \chi \) of \( H \), given by \(\chi(\exp X) = \chi_{f}(\exp X) = e^{i f(X)}, \  X \in \mathfrak{h}, \) for some \( f \in \mathfrak{g}^{\ast} \). Let \( \tau = \operatorname{Ind}_{H}^{G} \chi \) denote the monomial representation of \( G \) induced from \( \chi \).

The object of interest is the algebra \( D_{\tau}(G/H) \) of \( G \)-invariant differential operators acting on the homogeneous line bundle associated with the data \( (G, H, \chi) \). Under the assumption that \( \tau \) has finite multiplicities, it is known that \( D_{\tau}(G/H) \) is commutative.

In this talk, I will discuss the Polynomial Conjecture for the representation \( \tau \), which asserts that the algebra \( D_{\tau}(G/H) \) is isomorphic to  
\(\mathbb{C}[\Gamma_{\tau}]^{H}\),  the algebra of \( H \)-invariant polynomial functions on \( \Gamma_{\tau} \). Here, \( \Gamma_{\tau} = f + \mathfrak{h}^{\perp} \) denotes the affine subspace of \( \mathfrak{g}^{\ast} \).

I will present recent advances toward proving this conjecture, with a particular emphasis on Duflo's Polynomial Conjecture concerning the Poisson center of \( \Gamma_{\tau} \). Furthermore, I will discuss the case where \( \tau \) has discrete-type multiplicities in the exponential setting, shedding light on a counterexample to Duflo's conjecture.
 

The Cuntz semigroup of a C*-algebra A consists of equivalence classes of positive elements, where equivalence means roughly that two positive elements have the same rank relative to A.  It can be thought of as a generalization of the Murray von Neumann semigroup to positive elements and is an incredibly sensitive invariant. We present a calculation of the homotopy groups of these Cuntz classes as topological subspaces of A when A is classifiable in the sense of Elliott.  Remarkably, outside the case of compact classes, these spaces turn out to be contractible.