Thu, 20 Jun 2019
16:00
C4

What is Arakelov Geometry?

Esteban Gomezllata Marmolejo
(Oxford University)
Abstract

Arakelov geometry studies schemes X over ℤ, together with the Hermitian complex geometry of X(ℂ).
Most notably, it has been used to give a proof of Mordell's conjecture (Faltings's Theorem) by Paul Vojta; curves of genus greater than 1 have at most finitely many rational points.
In this talk, we'll introduce some of the ideas behind Arakelov theory, and show how many results in Araklev theory are analogous—with additional structure—to classic results such as intersection theory and Riemann Roch.

Wed, 13 Nov 2019

17:00 - 18:00

Oxford Mathematics Newcastle Public Lecture: Vicky Neale - ??????? in Maths?

Vicky Neale
(University of Oxford)
Further Information

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Mathematics is the pursuit of truth. But it is a pursuit carried out by human beings with human emotions. Join Vicky as she travels the mathematical rollercoaster.

--

Oxford Mathematics is delighted to announce that in partnership with Northumbria University we shall be hosting our first Newcastle Public Lecture on 13 November. Everybody is welcome as we demonstrate the range, beauty and challenges of mathematics. Vicky Neale, Whitehead Lecturer here in Oxford, will be our speaker. Vicky has given a range of Public Lectures in Oxford and beyond and has made numerous radio and television appearances.

5.00pm-6.00pm
Northumbria University
Lecture Theatre 002, Business & Law Building, City Campus East
Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 2SU

Please email @email to register

Watch live:
https://facebook.com/OxfordMathematics
https://livestream.com/oxuni/neale

Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

Thu, 30 May 2019

12:00 - 13:00
L4

Semiflow selection for the isentropic Euler system (joint work with E. Feireisl & M. Hofmanova)

Dominic Breit
(Heriot Watt University)
Abstract

It is nowadays well understood that the multidimensional isentropic Euler system is desperately ill–posed. Even certain smooth initial data give rise to infinitely many solutions and all available selection criteria fail to ensure both global existence and uniqueness. We propose a different approach to well–posedness of this system based on ideas from the theory of Markov semigroups: we show the existence of a Borel measurable solution semiflow. To this end, we introduce a notion of dissipative solution which is understood as time dependent trajectories of the basic state variables - the mass density, the linear momentum, and the energy - in a suitable phase space. The underlying system of PDEs is satisfied in a generalized sense. The solution semiflow enjoys the standard semigroup property and the solutions coincide with the strong solutions as long as the latter exist. Moreover, they minimize the energy (maximize the energy dissipation) among all dissipative solutions.

Thu, 09 May 2019

11:00 - 12:00
L4

Finite element exterior calculus with smoother finite element spaces

Johnny Guzmán
(Brown University)
Abstract

The finite element exterior calculus is a powerful approach to study many problems under the same lens. The canonical finite element spaces (see Arnold, Falk and Winther) are tied together with an exact sequence and have the required smoothness to define the exterior derivatives weakly. However, some applications require spaces that are more smooth (e.g. plate bending problems, incompressible flows). In this talk we will discuss some recent results in developing finite element spaceson simplicial triangulations with more smoothness, that also fit in an exact sequence. This is joint work with Guosheng Fu, Anna Lischke and Michael Neilan.

Thu, 23 May 2019

12:00 - 13:00
L4

Fractional wave equations

Ljubica Oparnica
(University of Novi Sad)
Abstract

The classical wave equation is derived from the system of three equations: The equation of motion of a (one-dimensional) deformable body, the Hook law as a constitutive equation, and the  strain measure, and describes wave propagation in elastic media. 
Fractional wave equations describe wave phenomena when viscoelasticity of a material or non-local effects of a material comes into an account. For waves in viscoelastic media, instead of Hook's law, a constitutive equation for viscoelastic body,  for example, Fractional Zener model or distributed order model of viscoelastic body, is used. To consider non-local effects of a media, one may replace classical strain measure by non-local strain measure. There are other constitutive equations and other ways to describe non-local effects which will be discussed within the talk.  
The system of three equations subject to initial conditions, initial displacement and initial velocity, is equivalent to one single equation, called fractional wave equation. Using different models for constitutive equations, and non-local measures, different fractional wave equations are obtained. After derivation of such equations, existence and uniqueness of their solution in the spaces of distributions is proved by the use of Laplace and Fourier transforms as main tool. Plots of solutions are presented. For some of derived equations microlocal analysis of the solution is conducted. 

Tue, 04 Jun 2019

12:00 - 13:00
C4

Quantifying structural and dynamical high-order statistical effects via multivariate information theory

Fernando Rosas
(Imperial College London)
Further Information


Fernando Rosas received the B.A. degree in music composition and philosophy, the B.Sc. degree in mathematics, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in engineering sciences from the Pontifícia Universidad Católica de Chile. He is currently a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow in the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Electronic Engineering at Imperial College London. Previously, he worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Electrical Engineering of KU Leuven, and as Research Fellow at the Department of Electrical Engineering of National Taiwan University. His research interests lie in the interface between information theory, complexity science and computational neuroscience.
 

Abstract


Complexity Science aims to understand what is that makes some systems to be "more than the sum of their parts". A natural first step to address this issue is to study networks of pairwise interactions, which have been done with great success in many disciplines -- to the extend that many people today identify Complexity Science with network analysis. In contrast, multivariate complexity provides a vast and mostly unexplored territory. As a matter of fact, the "modes of interdependency" that can exist between three or more variables are often nontrivial, poorly understood and, yet, are paramount for our understanding of complex systems in general, and emergence in particular. 
In this talk we present an information-theoretic framework to analyse high-order correlations, i.e. statistical dependencies that exist between groups of variables that cannot be reduced to pairwise interactions. Following the spirit of information theory, our approach is data-driven and model-agnostic, being applicable to discrete, continuous, and categorical data. We review the evolution of related ideas in the context of theoretical neuroscience, and discuss the most prominent extensions of information-theoretic metrics to multivariate settings. Then, we introduce the O-information, a novel metric that quantify various structural (i.e. synchronous) high-order effects. Finally, we provide a critical discussion on the framework of Integrated Information Theory (IIT), which suggests an approach to extend the analysis to dynamical settings. To illustrate the presented methods, we show how the analysis of high-order correlations can reveal critical structures in various scenarios, including cellular automata, Baroque music scores, and various EEG datasets.


References:
[1] F. Rosas, P.A. Mediano, M. Gastpar and H.J. Jensen, ``Quantifying High-order Interdependencies via Multivariate Extensions of the Mutual Information'', submitted to PRE, under review.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.11239
[2] F. Rosas, P.A. Mediano, M. Ugarte and H.J. Jensen, ``An information-theoretic approach to self-organisation: Emergence of complex interdependencies in coupled dynamical systems'', in Entropy, vol. 20 no. 10: 793, pp.1-25, Sept. 2018.
https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/20/10/793

 

Thu, 09 May 2019

13:00 - 14:00
L4

Talks by Dphil students

Theerawat Bhudisaksang & Yufei Zhang (DPhil students)
Abstract

Theerawat Bhudisaksang
----------------------

Adaptive robust control with statistical learning

We extend the adaptive robust methodology introduced in Bielecki et al. and propose a continuous-time version of their approach. Bielecki et al. consider a model in which the distribution of the underlying (observable) process depends on unknown parameters and the agent uses observations of the process to estimate the parameter values. The model is made robust to misspecification because the agent employs a set of ambiguity measures that contains measures where the parameter are inside a confidence region of their estimator. In our extension, we construct the set of ambiguity measures such that each probability measure in the set has a semimartingale characterisation lies in a restricted set. Finally, we prove the dynamic programming principle of the adaptive robust control in continuous time problem using measurable selection theorems, and we show that the value function can be characterised as the solution of a non-linear partial differential equation.

Yufei Zhang
-----------

A neural network based policy iteration algorithm with global convergence of values and controls for stochastic games on domains

In this talk, we propose a class of neural network based numerical schemes for solving semi-linear Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman-Isaacs (HJBI) boundary value problems which arise naturally from exit time problems of diffusion processes with controlled drift. We exploit a policy iteration to reduce the semilinear problem into a sequence of linear Dirichlet problems, which are subsequently approximated by a multilayer feedforward neural network ansatz. We establish that the numerical solutions converge globally in the H^2-norm, and further demonstrate that this convergence is superlinear, by interpreting the algorithm as an inexact Newton iteration for the HJBI equation. Moreover, we construct the optimal feedback controls from the numerical value functions and deduce convergence. The numerical schemes and convergence results are then extended to HJBI boundary value problems corresponding to controlled diffusion processes with oblique boundary reflection. Numerical experiments on the stochastic Zermelo navigation problem are presented to illustrate the theoretical results and to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method. 
 

Thu, 16 May 2019

12:00 - 13:00
L4

The weak null condition and the p-weighted energy method

Joe Keir
(Cambridge DAMTP)
Abstract

The Einstein equations in wave coordinates are an example of a system 
which does not obey the "null condition". This leads to many 
difficulties, most famously when attempting to prove global existence, 
otherwise known as the "nonlinear stability of Minkowski space". 
Previous approaches to overcoming these problems suffer from a lack of 
generalisability - among other things, they make the a priori assumption 
that the space is approximately scale-invariant. Given the current 
interest in studying the stability of black holes and other related 
problems, removing this assumption is of great importance.

The p-weighted energy method of Dafermos and Rodnianski promises to 
overcome this difficulty by providing a flexible and robust tool to 
prove decay. However, so far it has mainly been used to treat linear 
equations. In this talk I will explain how to modify this method so that 
it can be applied to nonlinear systems which only obey the "weak null 
condition" - a large class of systems that includes, as a special case, 
the Einstein equations. This involves combining the p-weighted energy 
method with many of the geometric methods originally used by 
Christodoulou and Klainerman. Among other things, this allows us to 
enlarge the class of wave equations which are known to admit small-data 
global solutions, it gives a new proof of the stability of Minkowski 
space, and it also yields detailed asymptotics. In particular, in some 
situations we can understand the geometric origin of the slow decay 
towards null infinity exhibited by some of these systems: it is due to 
the formation of "shocks at infinity".

Tue, 21 May 2019

12:00 - 13:00
C4

Graph-based classification of opinions in free-response surveys

Takaaki Aoki
(Kagawa University)
Abstract

Social surveys are widely used in today's society as a method for obtaining opinions and other information from large groups of people. The questions in social surveys are usually presented in either multiple-choice or free-response formats. Despite their advantages, free-response questions are employed less commonly in large-scale surveys, because in such situations, considerable effort is needed to categorise and summarise the resulting large dataset. This is the so-called coding problem. Here we propose a survey framework in which, respondents not only write down their own opinions, but also input information characterising the similarity between their individual responses and those of other respondents. This is done in much the same way as ``likes" are input in social network services. The information input in this simple procedure constitutes relational data among opinions, which we call the opinion graph. The diversity of typical opinions can be identified as a modular structure of such a graph, and the coding problem is solved through graph clustering in a statistically principled manner. We demonstrate our approach using a poll on the 2016 US presidential election and a survey given to graduates of a particular university.

Thu, 02 May 2019

13:00 - 14:00
L4

A class of stochastic games and moving free boundary problems

Renyuan Xu
(Berkeley)
Abstract

Stochastic control problems are closely related to free boundary problems, where both the underlying fully nonlinear PDEs and the boundaries separating the action and waiting regions are integral parts of the problems. In this talk, we will propose a class of stochastic N-player games and show how the free boundary problems involve moving boundaries due to the additional game nature. We will provide explicit Nash equilibria by solving a sequence of Skorokhod problems. For the special cases of resource allocation problems, we will show how players change their strategies based on different network structures between players and resources. We will also talk about the insights from a sharing economy perspective. This talk is based on a joint work with Xin Guo (UC Berkeley) and Wenpin Tang (UCLA).

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