In September 2024 we reported that a team of mathematicians from Oxford Mathematics and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics had uncovered a new class of shapes that tile space without using sharp corners. Remarkably, these ’ideal soft shapes’ are found abundantly in nature – from sea shells to muscle cells.
Resonances as a computational tool
Abstract
A large toolbox of numerical schemes for dispersive equations has been established, based on different discretization techniques such as discretizing the variation-of-constants formula (e.g., exponential integrators) or splitting the full equation into a series of simpler subproblems (e.g., splitting methods). In many situations these classical schemes allow a precise and efficient approximation. This, however, drastically changes whenever non-smooth phenomena enter the scene such as for problems at low regularity and high oscillations. Classical schemes fail to capture the oscillatory nature of the solution, and this may lead to severe instabilities and loss of convergence. In this talk I present a new class of resonance based schemes. The key idea in the construction of the new schemes is to tackle and deeply embed the underlying nonlinear structure of resonances into the numerical discretization. As in the continuous case, these terms are central to structure preservation and offer the new schemes strong geometric properties at low regularity.
Where on earth is the best laboratory to demonstrate the beauty of fluid dynamics?
Actually it’s not on earth. Here is the story of the soft cell.
And a longer read about the soft cell, discovered by Gabor Domokos and our own Alain Goriely.