Past

Let $\mathcal{B}$ be a (unital) commutative Banach algebra and $\Omega$ the set of non-trivial multiplicative linear functionals $\omega : \mathcal{B} \to \mathbb{C}$. Gelfand theory tells us that the kernels of these functionals are exactly the maximal ideals of $\mathcal{B}$ and, as a consequence, an element $b \in \mathcal{B}$ is invertible if and only if $\omega(b) \neq 0$ for all $\omega \in \Omega$. A generalisation to non-commutative Banach algebras is the local principle of Allan and Douglas, also known as central localisation: Let $\mathcal{B}$ be a Banach algebra, $Z$ a closed subalgebra of the center of $\mathcal{B}$ and $\Omega$ the set of maximal ideals of $Z$. For every $\omega \in \Omega$ let $\mathcal{I}_{\omega}$ be the smallest ideal of $\mathcal{B}$ which contains $\omega$. Then $b \in \mathcal{B}$ is invertible if and only if $b + \mathcal{I}_{\omega}$ is invertible in $\mathcal{B} / \mathcal{I}_{\omega}$ for every $\omega \in \Omega$.

From an operator theory point of view, one of the most important features of the local principle is the application to Calkin algebras. In that case the invertible elements are called Fredholm operators and the corresponding spectrum is called the essential spectrum. Therefore, by taking suitable subalgebras, we can obtain a characterisation of Fredholm operators. Many beautiful results in spectral theory, e.g.~formulas for the essential spectrum of Toeplitz operators, can be obtained in this way. However, the central localisation is often not sufficient to provide a satisfactory characterisation for more general operators. In this talk we therefore consider a generalisation where the ideals $\mathcal{I}_{\omega}$ do not originate from the center of the algebra. More precisely, we will start with general $L^p$-spaces and apply limit operator methods to obtain a Fredholm theory that is applicable to many different settings. In particular, we will obtain characterisations of Fredholmness and compactness in many new cases and also rediscover some classical results.

This talk is based on joint work with Christian Seifert.

The study of random matrix moments of moments has connections to number theory, combinatorics, and log-correlated fields. Our results give the leading order of these functions for integer moment parameters by exploiting connections with Gelfand-Tsetlin patterns and counts of lattice points in convex sets. This is joint work with Jon Keating and Theo Assiotis.

Abstract:

Quasicrystals have been observed recently in soft condensed mater, providing new insight into the ongoing quest to understand their formation and thermodynamic stability. I shall explain the stability of certain soft-matter quasicrystals, using surprisingly simple classical field theories, by making an analogy to Faraday waves. This will provide a recipe for designing pair potentials that yield crystals with (almost) any given symmetry.

There are various notions of rank, which measure the complexity of a tensor or polynomial. Cubic surfaces can be viewed as symmetric tensors.  We consider the non-symmetric tensor rank and the symmetric Waring rank of cubic surfaces, and show that the two notions coincide over the complex numbers. The results extend to order three tensors of all sizes, implying the equality of rank and symmetric rank when the symmetric rank is at most seven. We then explore the connection between the rank of a polynomial and the singularities of its vanishing locus, and we find the possible singular loci of a cubic surface of given rank. This talk is based on joint work with Eunice Sukarto.
 

ARC methods are Newton-type solvers for unconstrained, possibly nonconvex, optimisation problems. In this context, a novel variant based on dynamic inexact Hessian information is discussed. The approach preserves the optimal complexity of the basic framework and the main probabilistic results on the complexity and convergence analysis in the finite-sum minimisation setting will be shown. At the end, some numerical tests on machine learning problems, ill-conditioned databases and real-life applications will be given, in order to confirm the theoretical achievements. Joint work with Stefania Bellavia and Benedetta Morini (Università di Firenze). 

Many manufacturing processes require the use of robots to transport parts around a factory line. Some parts, which are very thin (e.g. car doors)
are prone to elastic deformations as they are moved around by a robot. These should be avoided at all cost. A problem that was recently raised by
F.E.E. (Fleischmann Elektrotech Engineering) at the ESGI 158 study group in Barcelona was to ascertain how to determine the stresses of a piece when
undergoing a prescribed motion by a robot. We present a simple model using Kirschoff-Love theory of flat plates and how this can be adapted. We
outline how the solutions of the model can then be used to determine the stresses. 

 I will give an overview of my recent research on the definition of asymptotic charges in asymptotically flat spacetimes, including the definition of subleading and dual BMS charges and the relation to the conserved Newman-Penrose charges at null infinity.

Random graphs were introduced as a convenient example for demonstrating the impossibility of ‘complete disorder’ by Erdos, who also thought that these objects will never become useful in the applied areas outside of pure mathematics. In this talk, I will view random graphs as objects in the field of applied mathematics and discus how the application-driven objectives have set new directions for studying random graphs. I will focus on characterising the sizes of connected components in graphs with a given degree distribution, on the percolation-like processes on such structures, and on generalisations to the coloured graphs. These theoretical questions have interesting implications for studying resilience of networks with nontrivial structures, and for materials science where they explain kinetics-driven phase transitions. Even more surprisingly, the results reveal intricate connections between random graphs and non-linear partial differential equations indicating new possibilities for their analysis.

A long time ago, Grothendieck made some conjectures. This has resulted in some things.

The Kruzkhov's semi-group of a scalar conservation law extends as a semi-group over $L^1$, thanks to its contraction property. M. Crandall raised in 1972 the question of whether its trajectories can be distributional, entropy solutions, or if they are only "abstract" solutions. We solve this question in the case of the multi-dimensional Burgers equation, which is a paradigm for non-degenerate conservation laws. Our answer is the consequence of dispersive estimates. We first establish $L^p$-decay rate by applying the recently discovered phenomenon of Compensated Integrability. The $L^\infty$-decay follows from a De Giorgi-style argument. This is a collaboration with Luis Sivestre (University of Chicago).

Witten-Reshetikhin-Turaev quantum invariants of links and 3 dimensional manifolds are obtained from quantum sl(2). There exist different versions of quantum sl(2) leading to other families of invariants. We will briefly overview the original construction and then discuss two variants. First one, so called unrolled quantum sl(2), allows construction of invariants of 3-manifolds involving C* flat connections. In simplest case it recovers Reidemeister torsion. The second one is the non restricted version at a root of unity. It enables construction of invariants of links equipped with a gauge class of SL(2,C) flat connection. This is based respectively on joined work with Costantino, Geer, Patureau and Geer, Patureau, Reshetikhin.

We model the trading strategy of an investor who spoofs the limit order book (LOB) to increase the revenue obtained from selling a position in a security. The strategy employs, in addition to sell limit orders (LOs) and sell market orders (MOs), a large number of spoof buy LOs to manipulate the volume imbalance of the LOB. Spoofing is illegal, so the strategy trades off the gains that originate from spoofing against the expected financial losses due to a fine imposed by the financial authorities. As the expected value of the fine increases, the investor relies less on spoofing, and if the expected fine is large enough, it is optimal for the investor not too spoof the LOB because the fine outweighs the benefits from spoofing. The arrival rate of buy MOs increases because other traders believe that the spoofed buy-heavy LOB shows the true supply of liquidity and interpret this imbalance as an upward pressure in prices. When the fine is low, our results show that spoofing considerably increases the revenues from liquidating a position. The profit of the spoof strategy is higher than that of a no-spoof strategy for two reasons. First, the investor employs fewer MOs to draw the inventory to zero and benefits from roundtrip trades, which stem from spoof buy LOs that are ‘inadvertently’ filled and subsequently unwound with sell LOs. Second, the midprice trends upward when the book is buy-heavy, therefore, as time evolves, the spoofer sells the asset at better prices (on average).

The Aldous diffusion is a conjectured Markov process on the
space of real trees that is the continuum analogue of discrete Markov
chains on binary trees. We construct this conjectured process via a
consistent system of stationary evolutions of binary trees with k
labelled leaves and edges decorated with diffusions on a space of
interval partitions constructed in previous work by the same authors.
This pathwise construction allows us to study and compute path
properties of the Aldous diffusion including evolutions of projected
masses and distances between branch points. A key part of proving the
consistency of the projective system is Rogers and Pitman’s notion of
intertwining. This is joint work with Noah Forman, Soumik Pal and
Douglas Rizzolo.                            

Morse theory has a long history with many spectacular applications in different areas of mathematics. In this talk I will explain an extension of the main theorem of Morse theory that works for a large class of functions on singular spaces. The main example to keep in mind is that of moment maps on varieties, and I will present some applications to the topology of symplectic quotients of singular spaces.
 

We discuss properties of the cosmological horizon of a de Sitter universe, and compare to those of ordinary black holes. We consider both the Lorentzian and Euclidean picture. We discuss the relation to the sphere partition function and give a group-theoretic picture in terms of the de Sitter group. Time permitting we discuss some properties of three-dimensional de Sitter theories with higher spin particles. 

Prime numbers have been looked at for centuries, but some of the most basic questions about them are still major unsolved problems. These problems began as idle curiosities, but have grown to become hugely important not only in pure mathematics, but also have many applications to the real world. I'll talk about some of these quests to find patterns in the sequence of prime numbers.

Single cell RNA-Seq data is challenging to analyse due to problems like dropout and cell type identification. We present a novel clustering 
approach that applies mixture models to learn interpretable clusters from RNA-Seq data, and demonstrate how it can be applied to publicly 
available scRNA-Seq data from the mouse brain. Having inferred groupings of the cells, we can then attempt to learn networks from the data. These 
approaches are widely applicable to single cell RNA-Seq datasets where  there is a need to identify and characterise sub-populations of cells.

Whereas the spectral properties of random matrices has been the subject of numerous studies and is well understood, the statistical properties of the corresponding eigenvectors has only been investigated in the last few years. We will review several recent results and emphasize their importance for cleaning empirical covariance matrices, a subject of great importance for financial applications.

I will describe some new-ish results on the average and maximum size of the Riemann zeta function in a "typical" interval of length 1 on the critical line. A (hopefully) interesting feature of the proofs is that they reduce the problem for the zeta function to an analogous problem for a random model, which can then be solved using various probabilistic techniques.

Whereas the spectral properties of random matrices has been the subject of numerous studies and is well understood, the statistical properties of the corresponding eigenvectors has only been investigated in the last few years. We will review several recent results and emphasize their importance for cleaning empirical covariance matrices, a subject of great importance for financial applications.

Discussin of https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.09858

The Toda integrable system was originally designed as a specific model for lattice field theories. Following Kostant's insights, we will explain how it naturally arises from the representation theory of Lie algebras, and present some more recent work relating it to cotangent bundles of Lie groups and the topology of Affine Grassmannians.

(Joint work with: Jüri Lember, Heinrich Matzinger, Raul Kangro)

Principal component analysis is an important pattern recognition and dimensionality reduction tool in many applications and are computed as eigenvectors

of a maximum likelihood covariance that approximates a population covariance. The eigenvectors are often used to extract structural information about the variables (or attributes) of the studied population. Since PCA is based on the eigen-decomposition of the proxy covariance rather than the ground-truth, it is important to understand the approximation error in each individual eigenvector as a function of the number of available samples. The combination of recent results of Koltchinskii & Lounici [8] and Yu, Wang & Samworth [11] yields such bounds. In the presented work we sharpen these bounds and show that eigenvectors can often be reconstructed to a required accuracy from a sample of strictly smaller size order.

Let $\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^n$, $n \geq 2$, be a bounded, connected, open set with Lipschitz boundary.
Let $u$ be an eigenfunction of the Laplacian on $\Omega$ with either a Dirichlet, Neumann or Robin boundary condition.
If an eigenfunction $u$ associated with the $k$--th eigenvalue has exactly $k$ nodal domains, then we call it a Courant-sharp eigenfunction. In this case, we call the corresponding eigenvalue a Courant-sharp eigenvalue.

We first discuss some known results for the Courant-sharp Dirichlet and Neumann eigenvalues of the Laplacian on Euclidean domains.

We then discuss whether the Robin eigenvalues of the Laplacian on the square are Courant-sharp.

This is based on joint work with B. Helffer (Université de Nantes).
 

 

Given a finite set X, is an easy exercise to show that a binary operation * from XxX to X which is injective in each variable separately, and which is also associative, makes (X,*) into a group. Hrushovski and others have asked what happens if * is only partially associative - do we still get something resembling a group? The answer is known to be yes (in a strong sense) if almost all triples satisfy the associative law. In joint work with Tim Gowers, we consider the so-called `1%' regime, in which we only have an epsilon fraction of triples satisfying the associative law. In this regime, the answer turns out to be rather more subtle, involving certain group-like structures which we call rough approximate groups. I will discuss these objects, and try to give a sense of how they arise, by describing a somewhat combinatorial interpretation of partial associativity.
 

Right-angled Artin groups (RAAGs) were first introduced in the 70s by Baudisch and further developed in the 80s by Droms.
They have attracted much attention in Geometric Group Theory. One of the many reasons is that it has been shown that all hyperbolic 3-manifold groups are virtually finitely presented subgroups of RAAGs.
In the first part of the talk, I will discuss some of their interesting properties. I will explain some of their relations with manifold groups and their importance in finiteness conditions for groups.
In the second part, I will focus on my PhD project concerning subgroups of direct products of RAAGs.

Do you feel unable to explain why maths are cool? Are you looking for fun and affordable theorems for your non-mathematician friends? This is your topic.

This talk aims to be a rigorous introduction to Social Choice Theory, a sub-branch of Game Theory with natural applications to economics, sociology and politics that tries to understand how to determine, based on the personal opinions of all individuals, the collective opinion of society. The goal is to prove the three famous and pessimistic impossibility theorems: Arrow's theorem, Gibbard's theorem and Balinski-Young's theorem. Our blunt conclusion will be that, unfortunately, there are no ideally fair social choice systems. Is there any hope yet?

 Lipschitz (or H\"older) spaces $C^\delta, \, k< \delta <k+1$, $k\in\mathbb{N}_0$, are the set of functions that are more regular than the $\mathcal{C}^k$ functions and less regular than the $\mathcal{C}^{k+1}$ functions. The classical definitions of H\"older classes involve  pointwise conditions for the functions and their derivatives.  This implies that to prove   regularity results for an operator among these spaces  we need its pointwise expression.  In many cases this can be a rather involved formula, see for example the expression of $(-\Delta)^\sigma$  in (Stinga, Torrea, Regularity Theory for the fractional harmonic oscilator, J. Funct. Anal., 2011.)

In  the 60's of last century, Stein and Taibleson, characterized bounded H\"older functions via some integral estimates of the Poisson semigroup, $e^{-y\sqrt{-\Delta}},$ and of  the Gauss semigroup, $e^{\tau{\Delta}}$. These kind of semigroup descriptions allow to obtain regularity results for fractional operators in these spaces in a more direct way.

 In this talk we shall see that we can characterize H\"older spaces adapted to other differential operators $\mathcal{L}$ by means of semigroups and that these characterizations will allow us to prove the boundedness of some fractional operators, such as $\mathcal{L}^{\pm \beta}$, Riesz transforms or Bessel potentials, avoiding the long, tedious and cumbersome computations that are needed when the pointwise expressions are handled.

Mirror symmetry, in a crude formulation, is usually presented as a correspondence between curve counting on a Calabi-Yau variety X, and some invariants extracted from a mirror family of Calabi-Yau varieties. After the physicists Bershadsky-Cecotti-Ooguri-Vafa (henceforth BCOV), this is organised according to the genus of the curves in X we wish to enumerate, and gives rise to an infinite recurrence of differential equations. In this talk, I will give a general introduction to these problems, and present a rigorous mathematical formulation of the BCOV conjecture at genus one, in terms of a lifting of the Grothendieck-Riemann-Roch. I will explain the main ideas of the proof of the conjecture for Calabi-Yau hypersurfaces in projective space, based on the Riemann-Roch theorem in Arakelov geometry. Our results generalise from dimension 3 to arbitrary dimensions previous work of Fang-Lu-Yoshikawa.
 

This is joint work with G. Freixas and C. Mourougane.

We extend the lightning Laplace solver (Gopal and Trefethen, SINUM 2019) to unbounded domains and to the biharmonic equation. Illustrating the high accuracy of such methods, we get beautiful contour plots of Moffatt eddies.

I'll give a general introduction to tensor-triangular geometry, the algebraic study of tensor-triangulated categories as they appear in topology, geometry and representation theory. Then I'll discuss an elementary idea, that of a "field" in this theory, and explain what we currently know about them.

A subset $D$ of a finite cyclic group $\mathbb{Z}/m\mathbb{Z}$ is called a "perfect difference set" if every nonzero element of $\mathbb{Z}/m\mathbb{Z}$ can be written uniquely as the difference of two elements of $D$. If such a set exists, then a simple counting argument shows that $m=n^2+n+1$ for some nonnegative integer $n$. Singer constructed examples of perfect difference sets in $\mathbb{Z}/(n^2+n+1)\mathbb{Z}$ whenever $n$ is a prime power, and it is an old conjecture that these are the only such $n$ for which $\mathbb{Z}/(n^2+n+1)\mathbb{Z}$ contains a perfect difference set. In this talk, I will discuss a proof of an asymptotic version of this conjecture.

Many computational techniques in data science involve the factorization of a data matrix into the product of two or more structured matrices. Examples include PCA, which relies on computing an SVD, recommendation systems, which leverage non-negative matrix factorization, infilling missing entries with low rank matrix completion, and finding sparse representations via dictionary learning. In our work we study a new matrix factorization problem, involving the recovery of $\textbf{A}$ and $\textbf{X}$ from $\textbf{Y} := \textbf{A}\textbf{X}$ under the following assumptions; $\textbf{A}$ is an $m \times n$ sparse binary matrix with a fixed number $d$ of nonzeros per column and $\textbf{X}$ is an $n \times N$ sparse real matrix whose columns have $k$ nonzeros and are dissociated. This setup is inspired and motivated by similar models studied in the dictionary learning literature as well as potential connections both with stochastic block models and combinatorial compressed sensing. In this talk we present a new algorithm, EBR, for solving this problem, as well as recovery guarantees in the context of a particular probabilistic data model. Using the properties of expander graphs we are able to show, under certain assumptions, that with just $N = \textit{O}( \log^2(n))$ samples then EBR recovers the factorization up to permutation with high probability. 

Can spatial fungal networks be informative for both ecology and network science?

Filamentous organisms grow as adaptive biological spatial networks. These networks are in a continuous balance of two main forces: exploration of the habitat to acquire scarce resources, and the transport of those resources within the developing network. In addition, the construction of the network has to be kept a low cost while taking into account the risk of damage by predation. Such network optimization is not unique to biological systems, but is relevant to transport networks across many domains. Thus, this collaborative project between FU-Berlin and University of Oxford represents the beginning of a research program that aims at: First, setting up protocols for the use of network analysis to characterize spatial networks formed by both macroscopic and microscopic filamentous organisms (e.g. Fungi), and determining the fitness and ecological consequences of different structure of the networks. Second, extracting biologically-inspired algorithms that lead to optimized network formation in fungi and discuss their utility in other network domains. This information is critical to demonstrate that we have a viable and scalable pipeline for the measurement of such properties as well provide preliminary evidence of the usefulness of studying network properties of fungi.

We consider an analogue of Kontsevich's matrix Airy function where the cubic potential $\mathrm{Tr}(\Phi^3)$ is replaced by a quartic term $\mathrm{Tr}(\Phi^4)$. By methods from quantum field theory we show that also the quartic case is exactly solvable. All cumulants can be expressed as composition of elementary functions with the inverse of another elementary function. For infinite matrices the inversion gives rise to hyperlogarithms and zeta values as familiar from quantum field theory. For finite matrices the elementary functions are rational and should be viewed as branched covers of Riemann surfaces, in striking analogy with the topological recursion of the Kontsevich model. This rationality is strong support for the conjecture that the quartic analogue of the Kontsevich model is integrable.
 

Gauss noted quadratic reciprocity to be among his favourite results, and any undergrad will quickly pick up on just how strange it is despite a plethora of elementary proofs. By 1930, E. Artin had finalized Artin reciprocity which wondrously subsumed all previous generalizations, but was still confined to abelian contexts. An amicable non-abelian reciprocity remains a driving force in number-theoretic research.

In this talk, I'll recount Artin reciprocity and show it implies quadratic and cubic reciprocity. I'll then talk about some candidate non-abelian reciprocities, and in particular, which morals of Artin reciprocity they preserve.

Nonlocal minimal surfaces are hypersurfaces of Euclidean space that minimize the fractional perimeter, a geometric functional introduced in 2010 by Caffarelli, Roquejoffre, and Savin in connection with phase transition problems displaying long-range interactions.

In this talk, I will introduce these objects, describe the most important progresses made so far in their analysis, and discuss the most challenging open questions.

I will then focus on the particular case of nonlocal minimal graphs and present some recent results obtained on their regularity and classification in collaboration with X. Cabre, A. Farina, and L. Lombardini.

The genus of a knot in a 3-manifold is defined to be the minimum genus of a compact, orientable surface bounding that knot, if such a surface exists. We consider the computational complexity of determining knot genus. Such problems have been studied by several mathematicians; among them are the works of Hass--Lagarias--Pippenger, Agol--Hass--Thurston, Agol and Lackenby. For a fixed 3-manifold the knot genus problem asks, given a knot K and an integer g, whether the genus of K is equal to g. In joint work with Lackenby, we prove that for any fixed, compact, orientable 3-manifold, the knot genus problem lies inNP, answering a question of Agol--Hass--Thurston from 2002. Previously this was known for rational homology 3-spheres by the work of Lackenby.

 I will talk about optimal estimates for stochastic integrals
in the case when both rough paths and martingales play a role.

This is an ongoing joint work with Peter Friz (TU Berlin).

We derive generalized lower Ricci bounds in terms of signed measures. And we prove associated gradient estimates for the heat flow with Neumann boundary conditions on domains of metric measure spaces obtained through „convexification“ of the domains by means of subtle time changes. This improves upon previous results both in the case of non-convex domains and in the case of convex domains.
 

We  show that homogeneous Einstein metrics on Euclidean spaces are Einstein solvmanifolds, using that they admit periodic, integrally minimal foliations by homogeneous hypersurfaces. For the geometric flow induced by the orbit-Einstein condition, we construct a Lyapunov function based on curvature estimates which come from real GIT.

I will discuss the origin of the choice of global structure
--- or equivalently, the choice for which higher p-form symmetries are
present in the theory --- for various (Lagrangian and non-Lagrangian)
field theories in terms of their realization in IIB and M-theory. I
will explain how this choice on the field theory side can be traced
back to the fact that fluxes in string/M-theory do not commute in the
presence of torsion. I will illustrate how these ideas provide a
stringy explanation for the fact that six-dimensional (2,0) and (1,0)
theories generically have a partition vector (as opposed to a partition
function) and explain how this reproduces the classification of N=4
theories provided by Aharony, Seiberg and Tachikawa. Time permitting, I
will also explain how to use these ideas to obtain the algebra of
higher p-form symmetries for 5d SCFTs arising from M-theory at
arbitrary isolated toric singularities, and to classify global forms
for various 4d theories in the presence of duality defects.

Mathematics has provided us with several extremely useful tools to apply in the world beyond mathematics.  But it also provides us with mathematicians -- individuals who have trained habits of careful thinking in domains where that is the only way to make progress. This talk will explore some other domains -- such as saying sensible things about the long-term future, or how to identify good actions in the world -- where this style of thinking seems particularly desirable as progress can otherwise be elusive or illusory.  It will also consider how a mathematician's curiosity can help to identify important questions.