Past

When modelling biochemical reactions within cells, it is vitally important to take into account the effect of intrinsic noise in the system, due to the small copy numbers of some of the chemical species. Deterministic systems can give vastly different types of behaviour for the same parameter sets of reaction rates as their stochastic analogues, giving us an incorrect view of the bifurcation behaviour.

The stochastic description of this problem gives rise to a multi-dimensional Markov jump process, which can be approximated by a system of stochastic differential equations. Long-time behaviour of the process can be better understood by looking at the steady-state solution of the corresponding Fokker-Planck equation.

In this talk we consider a new finite element method which uses simulated trajectories of the Markov-jump process to inform the choice of mesh in order to approximate this invariant distribution. The method has been implemented for systems in 3 dimensions, but we shall also consider systems of higher dimension.

We will describe the space of Bridgeland stability conditions

of the derived category of some CY3 algebras of quivers drawn on the

Riemann sphere. We give a biholomorphic map from the upper-half plane to

the space of stability conditions lifting the period map of a meromorphic

differential on a 1-dimensional family of elliptic curves. The map is

equivariant with respect to the actions of a subgroup of $\mathrm{PSL}(2,\mathbb Z)$ on the

left by monodromy of the rational elliptic surface and on the right by

autoequivalences of the derived category.

The complement of a divisor in the rational elliptic surface can be

identified with Hitchin's moduli space of connections on the projective

line with prescribed poles of a certain order at marked points. This is

the space of initial conditions of one of the Painleve equations whose

solutions describe isomonodromic deformations of these connections.

This is joint work with Uri Onn. We use motivic integration to get the growth rate of the sequence consisting of the number of conjugacy classes in quotients of G(O) by congruence subgroups, where $G$ is suitable algebraic group over the rationals and $O$ the ring of integers of a number field.

The proof uses tools from the work of Nir Avni on representation growth of arithmetic groups and results of Cluckers and Loeser on motivic rationality and motivic specialization.

Successful navigation through a complicated and evolving environment is a fundamental task carried out by an enormous range of organisms, with migration paths staggering in their length and intricacy. Selecting a path requires the detection, processing and integration of a myriad of cues drawn from the surrounding environment and in many instances it is the intrinsic orientation of the environment that provides a valuable navigational aid.

In this talk I will describe the use of transport models to describe migration in oriented environments, and demonstrate the scaling approaches that allow us to derive macroscopic models for movement.

I will illustrate the methods through a number of apposite examples, including the migration of cells in the extracellular matrix, the macroscopic growth of brain tumours and the movement of wolves in boreal forest.

Motivated by the study of micro-vascular disease, we have been investigating the relationship between the structure of capillary networks and the resulting blood perfusion through the muscular walls of the heart. In order to derive equations describing effective fluid transport, we employ an averaging technique called homogenisation, based on a separation of length scales. We find that the tissue-scale flow is governed by Darcy's Law, whose coefficients we are able to explicitly calculate by averaging the solution of the microscopic capillary-scale equations. By sampling from available data acquired via high-resolution imaging of the coronary capillaries, we automatically construct physiologically-realistic vessel networks on which we then numerically solve our capillary-scale equations. By validating against the explicit solution of Poiseuille flow in a discrete network of vessels, we show that our homogenisation method is indeed able to efficiently capture the averaged flow properties.

We prove existence of a global semigroup of conservative solutions of the nonlinear variational wave equation $u_{tt}-c(u) (c(u)u_x)_x=0$. The equation was derived by Saxton as a model for liquid crystals. This equation shares many of the peculiarities of the Hunter–Saxton and the Camassa–Holm equations. In particular, the equation possesses two distinct classes of solutions denoted conservative and dissipative. In order to solve the Cauchy problem uniquely it is necessary to augment the equation properly. In this talk we describe how this is done for conservative solutions. The talk is based on joint work with X. Raynaud.

The theory of modular forms owes in many ways lots of its results to the existence of the Hecke operators and their nice properties. However, even acting on modular forms of level 1, lots of basic questions remain unresolved. We will describe and prove some known properties of the Hecke operators, and state Maeda's conjecture. This conjecture, if true, has many deep consequences in the theory. In particular, we will indicate how it implies the nonvanishing of certain L-functions.

The notion of an E-infinity ring spectrum arose about thirty years ago,

and was studied in depth by Peter May et al, then later reinterpreted

in the framework of EKMM as equivalent to that of a commutative S-algebra.

A great deal of work on the existence of E-infinity structures using

various obstruction theories has led to a considerable enlargement of

the body of known examples. Despite this, there are some gaps in our

knowledge. The question that is a major motivation for this talk is

`Does the Brown-Peterson spectrum BP for a prime p admit an E-infinity

ring structure?'. This has been an important outstanding problem for

almost four decades, despite various attempts to answer it.

I will explain what BP is and give a brief history of the above problem.

Then I will discuss a construction that gives a new E-infinity ring spectrum

which agrees with BP if the latter has an E-infinity structure. However,

I do not know how to prove this without assuming such a structure!

We define a notion of discrete Ricci curvature for a metric measure space by looking at whether "small balls are closer than their centers are". In a Riemannian manifolds this gives back usual Ricci curvature up to scaling. This definition is very easy to apply in a series of examples such as graphs (eg the discrete cube has positive curvature). We are able to generalize several Riemannian theorems in positive curvature, such as concentration of measure and the log-Sobolev inequality. This definition also allows to prove new theorems both in the Riemannian and discrete case: for example improved bounds on spectral gap of the Laplace-Beltrami operator, and fast convergence results for some Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods

In this talk we show how the computation of the group of components of Prym varieties of spectral covers leads to cohomological results on the moduli space of stable bundles originally due to Harder-Narasimhan. This is joint work with Christian Pauly.

We establish a large deviations principle for the block sizes of a uniformly random non-crossing partition. As an application we obtain a variational formula for the maximum of the support of a compactly supported probability measure in terms of its free cumulants, provided these are all non-negative. This is useful in free probability theory, where sometimes the R-transform is known but cannot be inverted explicitly to yield the density.

Four-dimensional (4d) supergravities with non-geometric terms in their potential are very promising models for phenomenology. Indeed, these terms, generated by so-called non-geometric fluxes, generically help to obtain de Sitter vacua, or to stabilise moduli. Unfortunately, deriving these theories from a compactified ten-dimensional (10d) supergravity has not been achieved so far. One reason is that non-geometric fluxes do not seem to match any 10d field, and another reason is the appearance of global issues in 10d non-geometric configurations.

After reviewing some background material, we present in this talk a solution to the two previous issues. Thanks to a field redefinition, we make the non-geometric Q-flux appear in a 10d action, which only differs from the NSNS action by a total derivative. In addition, this new action is globally well-defined, at least in some examples, and one can then perform the dimensional reduction to recover the 4d non-geometric potential. We also mention an application to the heterotic string.

Based on 1106.4015.

• Stephen Peppin
• Chris Prior
• Mark Flegg