16:00
3 Minute Thesis competition
Abstract
16:00
Creating Impact for Maths Research via Consulting, Licensing and Spinouts
Abstract
Oxford University Innovation, the University’s commercialisation team, will explain the support they can give to Maths researchers who want to generate commercial impact from their work and expertise. In addition to an overview of consulting, this talk will explain how mathematical techniques and software can be protected and commercialised.
16:00
Graduate Jobs in finance and the recruitment process
Abstract
Join us for a session with Keith Macksoud, Executive Director at global recruitment consultant Options Group in London and who previously has > 20 years’ experience in Prime Brokerage Sales at Morgan Stanley, Citi, and Deutsche Bank. Keith will discuss the recruitment process for financial institutions, and how to increase your chances of a successful application.
Keith will detail his finance background in Prime Brokerage and provide students with an exclusive look behind the scenes of executive search and strategic consulting firm Options Group. We will look at what Options Group does, how executive search firms work and the Firm’s 30-year track record of placing individuals at many of the industries’ largest and most successful global investment banks, investment managers and other financial services-related organisations.
About Options Group
Options Group is a leading global executive search and strategic consulting firm specializing in financial services including capital markets, global markets, alternative investments, hedge funds, and private banking/wealth management.
During the pandemic, you may have seen graphs of data plotted on strange-looking (logarithmic) scales. Oliver will explain some of the basics and history of logarithms, and show why they are a natural tool to represent numbers ranging from COVID data to Instagram followers. In fact, we’ll see how logarithms can even help us understand information itself in a mathematical way.
Short- and late-time behaviours of Fokker-Planck equations for heterogeneous diffusions
Abstract
The Fokker-Planck equation is one of the major tools of statistical physics in the description of stochastic processes, with numerous applications in physics, chemistry and biology. In the case of heterogeneous diffusions, the formulation of the equation depends on the choice of the discretization of the stochastic integral in the underlying Langevin-equation due to the multiplicative noise. In the Fokker-Planck equation, the choice of discretization then enters as a parameter in the definition of drift and diffusion terms. I show how both short- and long-time limits are affected by this choice. In the long-time limit, the existence of normalizable probability distribution functions is not always guaranteed which can be remedied by invoking elements of infinite ergodic theory.
[1] S. Giordano, F. Cleri, R. Blossey, Phys Rev E 107, 044111 (2023)
[2] T. Dupont, S. Giordano, F. Cleri, R. Blossey, arXiv:2401.01765 (2024)
12:30
Page curves and replica wormholes from chaotic dynamics
Abstract
What is the bare minimum needed to get a unitarity-consistent black hole radiation entropy curve? In this talk, I will show how to capture both Hawking's non-unitary entropy curve, and density matrix-connecting contributions that restore unitarity, in a toy quantum system with chaotic dynamics. The motivation is to find the simplest possible dynamical model, dropping all superfluous details, that captures this aspect of gravitational physics. In the model, the Hamiltonian obeys random matrix statistics within microcanonical windows, the entropy of the averaged state gives the non-unitary curve, the averaged entropy gives the unitary curve, and the difference comes from matrix index contractions in the Haar averaging that connect the density matrices in a replica wormhole-like manner.
Non-archimedean equidistribution and L-polynomials of curves over finite fields
Abstract
Let q be a prime power and let C be a smooth curve defined over F_q. The number of points of C over the finite extensions of F_q are determined by the Zeta function of C, which can be written in the form P_C(t)/((1-t)(1-qt)), where P_C(t) is a polynomial of degree 2g and g is the genus of C; this is often called the L-polynomial of C. We use a Chebotarev-like statement (over function fields instead of Z) due to Katz in order to study the distribution, as C varies, of the coefficients of P_C(t) in a non-archimedean setting.
Typical Ramsey properties of the primes and abelian groups
Abstract
Given a matrix $A$ with integer entries, a subset $S$ of an abelian group and $r\in\mathbb N$, we say that $S$ is $(A,r)$-Rado if any $r$-colouring of $S$ yields a monochromatic solution to the system of equations $Ax=0$. A classical result of Rado characterises all those matrices $A$ such that $\mathbb N$ is $(A,r)$-Rado for all $r \in \mathbb N$. Rödl and Ruciński, and Friedgut, Rödl and Schacht proved a random version of Rado’s theorem where one considers a random subset of $[n]:=\{1,\dots,n\}$.
In this paper, we investigate the analogous random Ramsey problem in the more general setting of abelian groups. Given a sequence $(S_n)_{n\in\mathbb N}$ of finite subsets of abelian groups, let $S_{n,p}$ be a random subset of $S_n$ obtained by including each element of $S_n$ independently with probability $p$. We are interested in determining the probability threshold for $S_{n,p}$ being $(A,r)$-Rado.
Our main result is a general black box for hypergraphs which we use to tackle problems of this type. Using this tool in conjunction with a series of supersaturation results, we determine the probability threshold for a number of different cases. A consequence of the Green-Tao theorem is the van der Waerden theorem for the primes: every finite colouring of the primes contains arbitrarily long monochromatic arithmetic progressions. Using our machinery, we obtain a random version of this result. We also prove a novel supersaturation result for $[n]^d$ and use it to prove an integer lattice generalisation of the random version of Rado's theorem.
This is joint work with Andrea Freschi and Andrew Treglown (both University of Birmingham).