Past

We continue the study by Melo and Winter [arXiv:1712.01763, 2017] on the possible intersection sizes of a $k$-dimensional subspace with the vertices of the $n$-dimensional hypercube in Euclidean space. Melo and Winter conjectured that all intersection sizes larger than $2^{k-1}$ (the “large” sizes) are of the form $2^{k-1} + 2^i$. We show that this is almost true: the large intersection sizes are either of this form or of the form $35\cdot2^{k-6}$ . We also disprove a second conjecture of Melo and Winter by proving that a positive fraction of the “small” values is missing.

Polyfree groups are defined as groups having a series of normal
subgroups such that each sucessive quotient is free. This property
imples locally indicability and therefore also right orderability. Right
angled Artin groups are known to be polyfree (a result shown
independently by Duchamp-Krob, Howie and Hermiller-Sunic). Here we show
that Artin FC-groups for which all the defining relation are of even
type  are also polyfree. This is a joint work with Ruven Blasco and Luis
Paris.

The talk introduces the problem of completing a partially observed matrix whose columns obey a nonlinear structure. This is an extension of classical low-rank matrix completion where the structure is linear. Such matrices are in general full rank, but it is often possible to exhibit a low rank structure when the data is lifted to a higher dimensional space of features. The presence of a nonlinear lifting makes it impossible to write the problem using common low-rank matrix completion formulations. We investigate formulations as a nonconvex optimisation problem and optimisation on Riemannian manifolds.

In gas-liquid two-phase pipe flows, flow regime transition is associated with changes in the micro-scale geometry of the flow. In particular, the bubbly-slug transition is associated with the coalescence and break-up of bubbles in a turbulent pipe flow. We consider a sequence of models designed to facilitate an understanding of this process. The simplest such model is a classical coalescence model in one spatial dimension. This is formulated as a stochastic process involving nucleation and subsequent growth of ‘seeds’, which coalesce as they grow. We study the evolution of the bubble size distribution both analytically and numerically. We also present some ideas concerning ways in which the model can be extended to more realistic two- and three-dimensional geometries.

Quantum Yang-Mills theory is an important part of the Standard model built
by physicists to describe elementary particles and their interactions. One
approach to this theory consists in constructing a probability measure on an
infinite-dimensional space of connections on a principal bundle over
space-time. However, in the physically realistic 4-dimensional situation,
the construction of this measure is still an open mathematical problem. The
subject of this talk will be the physically less realistic 2-dimensional
situation, in which the construction of the measure is possible, and fairly
well understood.

In probabilistic terms, the 2-dimensional Yang-Mills measure is the
distribution of a stochastic process with values in a compact Lie group (for

example the unitary group U(N)) indexed by the set of continuous closed
curves with finite length on a compact surface (for example a disk, a sphere
or a torus) on which one can measure areas. It can be seen as a Brownian
motion (or a Brownian bridge) on the chosen compact Lie group indexed by
closed curves, the role of time being played in a sense by area.

In this talk, I will describe the physical context in which the Yang-Mills
measure is constructed, and describe it without assuming any prior
familiarity with the subject. I will then present a set of results obtained
in the last few years by Antoine Dahlqvist, Bruce Driver, Franck Gabriel,
Brian Hall, Todd Kemp, James Norris and myself concerning the limit as N
tends to infinity of the Yang-Mills measure constructed with the unitary
group U(N).

Mechanical percolation is a phenomenon in materials processing wherein ‘filler’ rod-like particles are incorporated into polymeric materials to enhance the composite’s mechanical properties. Experiments have well-characterized a nonlinear phase transition from floppy to rigid behavior at a threshold filler concentration, but the underlying mechanism is not well understood. We develop and utilize an iterative graph compression algorithm to demonstrate that this experimental phenomenon coincides with the formation of a spatially extending set of mutually rigid rods (‘rigidity percolation’). First, we verify the efficacy of this method in two-dimensional fiber systems (intersecting line segments), then moving to the more interesting and mechanically representative problem of three-dimensional fiber systems (cylinders). We show that, when the fibers are uniformly distributed both spatially and orientationally, the onset of rigidity percolation appears to co-occur with a mean field prediction that is applicable across a wide range of aspect ratios.

A lot of physical processes are modelled by conservation laws (mass, momentum, energy, charge, ...) Because of natural symmetries, these conservation laws express often that some symmetric tensor is divergence-free, in the space-time variables. We extract from this structure a non-trivial information, whenever the tensor takes positive semi-definite values. The qualitative part is called Compensated Integrability, while the quantitative part is a generalized Gagliardo inequality.

In the first part, we shall present the theoretical analysis. The proofs of various versions involve deep results from the optimal transportation theory. Then we shall deduce new fundamental estimates for gases (Euler system, Boltzmann equation, Vlaov-Poisson equation).

One of the theorems will have been used before, during the Monday seminar (PDE Seminar 4pm Monday 12 November)

All graduate students, post-docs faculty and visitors are welcome to come to the lectures. If you aren't a member of the CDT please email @email to confirm that you will be attending.

Two curves in a closed hyperbolic surface of genus g are of the same type if they differ by a mapping class. Mirzakhani studied the number of curves of given type and of hyperbolic length bounded by L, showing that as L grows, it is asymptotic to a constant times L^{6g-6}. In this talk I will discuss a generalization of this result, allowing for other notions of length. For example, the same asymptotics hold if we put any (singular) Riemannian metric on the surface. The main ingredient in this generalization is to study measures on the space of geodesic currents.

Solutions to Rough Differential Equations (RDE) may be constructed by several means. Beyond the fixed point argument, several approaches rely on using approximations of solutions over short times (Davie, Friz & Victoir, Bailleul, ...). In this talk, we present a generic, unifying framework to consider approximations of flows, called almost flows, and flows through the non-linear sewing lemma. This framework unifies the approaches mentioned above and decouples the analytical part from the algebraic part (manipulation of iterated integrals) when studying RDE. Beyond this, flows are objects with their own properties.New results, such as existence of measurable flows when several solutions of the corresponding RDE exist, will also be presented.

From a joint work with Antoine Brault (U. Toulouse III, France).

In the context of randomly fluctuating surfaces in (1+1)-dimensions two Universality Classes have generally been considered, the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang and the Edwards-Wilkinson. Models within these classes exhibit universal fluctuations under 1:2:3 and 1:2:4 scaling respectively. Starting from a modification of the classical Ballistic Deposition model we will show that this picture is not exhaustive and another Universality Class, whose scaling exponents are 1:1:2, has to be taken into account. We will describe how it arises, briefly discuss its connections to KPZ and introduce a new stochastic process, the Brownian Castle, deeply connected to the Brownian Web, which should capture the large-scale behaviour of models within this Class. 

Introduced by Konno, hyperpolygon spaces are examples of Nakajima quiver varieties.  The simplest of these is a noncompact complex surface admitting the structure of a gravitational instanton, and therefore fits nicely into the Kronheimer-Nakajima classification of complete ALE hyperkaehler 4-manifolds, which is a geometric realization of the McKay correspondence for finite subgroups of SU(2).  For more general hyperpolygon spaces, we can speculate on how
this classification might be extended by studying the geometry of hyperpolygons at "infinity". This is ongoing work with Hartmut Weiss.

We are very excited to have another session with invited speakers joining us for the lunch next week. Annika Heckel, Frances Kirwan and Marc Lackenby will all be joining us for a panel discussion on balancing family with academia. All are welcome to join us and to ask questions. 

We hope to see many of you at the lunch - Monday 1-2pm Quillen Room (N3.12).

We test various conjectures on quantum gravity for general 6d string compactifications in the framework of F-theory. Starting with a gauge theory coupled to gravity, we first analyze the limit in Kähler moduli space where the gauge coupling tends to zero while gravity is kept dynamical. A key observation is made about the appearance of a tensionless string in such a limit. For a more quantitative analysis, we focus on a U(1) gauge symmetry and determine the elliptic genus of this string in terms of certain meromorphic weak Jacobi forms, of which modular properties allow us to determine the charge-to-mass ratios of certain string excitations. A tower of these asymptotically massless charged states are then confirmed to satisfy the (sub-)Lattice Weak Gravity Conjecture, the Completeness Conjecture, and the Swampland Distance Conjecture. If time permits, we interpret their charge-to-mass ratios in two a priori independent perspectives. All of this is then generalized to theories with multiple U(1)s.

Cristina Palmer-Anghel: Quantum invariants via topological intersection pairings
The world of quantum invariants for knots started in 1984 with the discovery of a strong link invariant, namely the Jones polynomial. Then, Reshetikhin and Turaev developed a conceptual algebraic method that, starting with any quantum group, produces invariants for knots. The question that we have in mind is to find topological models for certain types of quantum invariants. On the topological side, in 2000, Bigelow, building on earlier work of Lawrence,
interpreted the original Jones polynomial in a homological manner- as a graded intersection pairing in a covering of a configuration space of the punctured disc. On the quantum side of the story, the coloured Jones polynomials are a sequence of quantum invariants constructed through the Reshetikhin-Turaev recipe from the quantum group Uq(sl(2)). The first invariant of this sequence is the original Jones polynomial. In this talk we will present how one can use topological intersection pairings in order to describe a topological model for all coloured Jones polynomials.

Francis Woodhouse: Autonomous mechanisms inspired by biology

Unlike the air around us, biological systems are not in equilibrium: cells consume chemical energy to keep growing and moving, forming a clear arrow of time. The recent creation of artificial versions of these ‘active’ materials suggests that these concepts can be harnessed to power new soft robotic systems fuelled by as simple a source as oxygen. After an introduction to the physics of natural and artificial active systems, we will see how endowing a mechanical network with activity can create an intricate self-actuating mechanism.

In 1897 J.J. Thomson 'discovered' the electron. The previous year, he and his research student Ernest Rutherford (later to 'discover' theatomic nucleus), collaborated in experiments to work out why gases exposed to x-rays became conducting. 

This talk will discuss the very different mathematical educations of the two men, and the impact these differences had on their experimental investigation and the theory they arrived at. This theory formed the backdrop to Thomson's electron work the following year. 

Medical data often comes in multi-modal, streamed data. The challenge is to extract useful information from this data in an environment where gathering data is expensive. In this talk, I show how signatures can be used to predict the progression of the ALS disease.

In this talk, we consider the supervised learning problem where the explanatory variable is a data stream. We provide an approach based on identifying carefully chosen features of the stream which allows linear regression to be used to characterise the functional relationship between explanatory variables and the conditional distribution of the response; the methods used to develop and justify this approach, such as the signature of a stream and the shuffle product of tensors, are standard tools in the theory of rough paths and provide a unified and non-parametric approach with potential significant dimension reduction. We apply it to the example of detecting transient datasets and demonstrate the superior effectiveness of this method benchmarked with supervised learning methods with raw data.

For any prime p > 3, the strongest lower bounds for the number of imaginary quadratic fields with discriminant down down to -X for which the class group has trivial (non-trivial) p-torsion are due to Kohnen and Ono (Soundararajan). I will discuss recent refinements of these classic results in which we consider the imaginary quadratic fields whose class number is indivisible (divisible) by p such that a given finite set of primes factor in a prescribed way. We prove a lower bound for the number of such fields with discriminant down to -X which is of the same order of magnitude as Kohnen and Ono's (Soundararajan's) results. For the indivisibility case, we rely on a result of Wiles establishing the existence of imaginary quadratic fields with trivial p-torsion in their class groups satisfying almost any given finite set of local conditions, and a result of Zagier which says that the Hurwitz class numbers are the Fourier coefficients of a mock modular form.

(Marta Lewicka)

Variational methods have been extensively used in the past decades to rigorously derive nonlinear models in the description of thin elastic films. In this context, natural growth or differential swelling-shrinking lead to models where an elastic body aims at reaching a space-dependent metric. We will describe the effect of such, generically incompatible, prestrain metrics on the singular limits' bidimensional models. We will discuss metrics that vary across the specimen in both the midplate and the thin (transversal) directions. We will also cover the case of the oscillatory prestrain, exhibit its relation to the non-oscillatory case via identifying the effective metrics, and discuss the role of the Riemann curvature tensor in the limiting models.

(Shankar Venkataramani)

Using the bidimensional models for pre-strained Elasticity, that Marta will discuss in her talk, I will discuss some contrasts between the mechanics of thin objects with non-negative curvature (plates, spherical shells, etc) and the mechanics of hyperbolic sheets, i.e. soft/thin objects with negative curvature. I will motivate the need for new "geometric" methods for discretizing the relevant equations, and present some of our preliminary work in this direction.

This is joint work with Toby Shearman and Ken Yamamoto.

TQFTs lie at the intersection of maths and theoretical physics. Topologically, they are a recipe for calculating an invariant of manifolds by cutting them into elementary pieces; physically, they describe the evolution of the state of a particle. These two viewpoints allow physical intuition to be harnessed to shed light on topological problems, including understanding the topology of 4-manifolds and calculating geometric invariants using topology.

Recent results have provided classifications of certain types of TQFTs as algebraic structures. After reviewing the definition of TQFTs and giving some diagrammatic examples, I will give informal arguments as to how these classifications arise. Finally, I will show that in many cases these algebras are in fact free, and give an explicit classification of them in this case.
 

Risk-indifference pricing is proposed as an alternative to utility indifference pricing, where a risk measure is used instead of a utility based preference. In this, we propose to include the possibility to change the attitude to risk evaluation as time progresses. This is particularly reasonable for long term investments and strategies. 

Then we introduce a fully-dynamic risk-indifference criteria, in which a whole family of risk measures is considered. The risk-indifference pricing system is studied from the point of view of its properties as a convex price system. We tackle questions of time-consistency in the risk evaluation and the corresponding prices. This analysis provides a new insight also to time-consistency for ordinary dynamic risk-measures.

Our techniques and results are set in the representation and extension theorems for convex operators. We shall argue and finally provide a setting in which fully-dynamic risk-indifference pricing is a well set convex price system.

The presentation is based on joint works with Jocelyne Bion-Nadal.