Why, What, hoW?
This seminar is inspired by Idiot's Guide seminar and the New Member Seminar that used to be held at KIAS. Research talks often focus on what and how, but don't address the question of why the speaker finds the topic interesting. By encouraging speakers to avoid technical details and think about why, we hope to create a friendly seminar where:
We invite anyone interested in giving a talk to contact one of the organizers.
This seminar is oriented not to be a usual research seminar. We request that speakers avoid technical details and make the topic accessible to broader audience. Speakers may find it helpful to keep in mind the three questions suggested by the title of the seminar:
Speakers may present their own theorems but it is neither necessary nor recommended. As we encourage stupid questions and a lively discussion, speakers should expect less material than in a usual research seminar.
You may find the details of the talks held in this seminar series below.
This page uses MathJax. This may cause math processing errors in older browsers such as Internet Explorer 8. If there is a problem, please visit the official announcement of seminars from KIAS.
December 21: Jean-Emile Bourgine (KIAS) 16:00–17:00 (UTC+9) #Zoom
Quantum toroidal algebras: Why? What? HoW?
Following the iconic formula of the 3W seminar, I will attempt to explain why this mathematical object came to occupy the greatest part of my time over the last four years. Taking both mathematics and physics perspectives, I shall explain how this algebra manages to unify objects of a very different nature: quantum groups, W- algebras and Hecke algebras. These considerations will lead us to three "What?", or three different ways of constructing the algebras. Finally, the "HoW" will focus on the vertex operators, showing how the same technique is used in different models of theoretical physics: 2d Conformal Field Theories, Quantum Integrables Systems and Topological String Theory.
December 7: Byungdo Park (Chungbuk National University) 13:00–14:00 (UTC+9) #Zoom
The Atiyah-Jänich theorem and its twisted refinement
What is good mathematics? Should it be difficult by using technical arguments, should it be fancy by using advanced theories, or all these do not matter and should it have practical applications? In this talk for pedestrians, I am going to lead you to one of good mathematics and explain why it is good. The talk could be viewed as a brief introduction to category theory, as I shall explain what a category, a functor, and a natural transformation between two functors are in a way that leads to a statement of an elementary but a deep theorem proved by K. Jänich and M. Atiyah in the sixties that the space of homotopy classes of maps into the space of Fredholm operators on the Hilbert space is naturally isomorphic to the complex K-theory. I will then introduce a work in progress proving a twisted variant of this theorem. The talk is going to be accommodating non-experts and mostly self-contained.
November 30: Plinio G. P. Murillo (Universidade Federal Fluminense) 10:00–11:00 (UTC+9) #Zoom
Arithmetic and geometry of hyperbolic surfaces
The goal of this talk is to share with the audience some connections between number theory and geometry that appear in the study of hyperbolic surfaces.
November 9: Jules Lamers (University of Melbourne) 16:00–17:00 (UTC+9) #Zoom
An invitation to spin chains and quantum integrability
Spin chains are quantum-mechanical models for magnetism. Some of these models are 'quantum integrable', that is, exactly solvable in a certain sense thanks to an underlying (quantum-)algebraic structure. This is closely related to topics such as representation theory, orthogonal polynomials and combinatorics. In this talk I will introduce spin chains and give an overview of some key concepts and results in the field. I will discuss the prototype, the Heisenberg spin chain, as well as two models in which I am particularly interested, the Haldane--Shastry and Inozemtsev spin chains.
October 19: Anna Cepek (IBS-CGP) 16:00–17:00 (UTC+9) #Zoom
Approaching the space of knots with higher categories
A knot $K$ is an embedding from $\mathbb{S}^1$ into $\mathbb{R}^3$. Because embeddings are, in particular, injective, $K$ induces a map between the spaces of configurations of finite subsets of $\mathbb{S}^1$ and $\mathbb{R}^3$ of some fixed cardinality $r$. The homotopy-types of such configuration spaces organize as an $\infty$-category, the construction of which makes use of stratified spaces and exit-path $\infty$-categories thereof. The goal of this talk is to supply the constructions of these $\infty$-categories and motivate the use of them in studying the space of knots.
October 12: Sheng Meng (KIAS) 16:00–17:00 (UTC+9) #Zoom
Jordan property of automorphism groups
Given a (complex) projective variety $X$, consider its full automorphism group $Aut(X)$. I will prove its Jordan property: there exists a constant $C$ depending only on $X$ such that for any finite subgroup $G$ there exists an abelian subgroup $H$ (normal) in $G$ with index $[G:H]$ bounded by $C$. It traces back a famous theorem of linear-algebra version proved by Camille Jordan a century ago. This talk is based on a joint work with De-Qi Zhang.
September 21: Anand Sawant (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research) 16:00–17:00 (UTC+9) #Zoom
Motivic homotopy theory - an invitation
Since its inception in the foundational work of Morel and Voevodsky in the 1990's, motivic (or $A^1$)-homotopy theory has provided a systematic framework to successfully adapt several techniques of algebraic topology to the realm of algebraic geometry by having the affine line play the role of the unit interval. I will describe a heuristic, which explains how quadratic forms naturally come into picture while trying to import techniques from topology into algebraic geometry. If time permits, I will give some examples of classical results from algebraic topology and algebraic geometry and their quadratic enrichments. The talk will not assume any prior acquaintance with motivic homotopy theory.
September 07: Makoto Miura (University of Tokyo) 16:00–17:00 (UTC+9) #Zoom
27 lines on a cubic surface
There are exactly 27 lines on a smooth cubic surface in $\mathbb{C}P^3$. In this introductory talk, we will review this classical fact in projective geometry and discuss some involved topics with particular emphasis on the geometry of a Grassmannian and complete intersections in it.
August 24: Igor Krylov (KIAS) 16:00–17:00 (UTC+9) #Zoom
Cremona group
Cremona group of rank $n$ is the group of automorphisms of the field of rational functions $k(y_1,...,y_n)$. It can also be defined geometrically: as a group of birational transformations of the projective (or affine) space of dimension $n$. I will talk about generators and subgroups of Cremona groups of rank $2$ and explain the ideas used in their study. At the end I will also talk about the rank $3$ case and the difficulties arising when we increase dimension. I will give very explicit examples and this talk is aimed at general audience.
July 27: Benito Juárez-Aubry (IIMAS UNAM) 11:00–12:00 (UTC+9) #Zoom
Quantum field theory in curved spacetimes: What, why and how? Slides
Quantum field theory in curved spacetime is a vibrant field of research in physics, lying at the intersection of quantum theory, gravitation and mathematical physics. I will give my perspective on this field, an overview of its conceptual status inside physics and discuss some of the predictions of the theory, such as Hawking radiation and the Unruh effect. I will also comment on mathematical and experimental challenges lying ahead of the road on the subject. In the spirit of the seminar, the talk will be rather verbose and technicalities will be avoided.
July 20: Lavneet Janagal (KIAS-Physics) 16:00–17:00 (UTC+9) #Zoom
Sphere packing in higher than 3-D
I will discuss few best known sphere packings in higher dimensions with special emphasis on the ones which are proved to be optimal packings in $D=8$ and $D=24$.
References:
1. Sphere packings, Lattices and groups by Conway and Sloane.
2. Sphere packing and quantum gravity (arxiv:1905.01319)
July 13: Hyun Kyu Kim (Ewha Womans University) 11:00–12:00 (UTC+9) #Zoom
Intertwining operators for representations of quantum varieties
A variety can be viewed as a groupoid, whose objects are some commutative algebras, and morphisms are isomorphisms between fields of fractions of the algebras, which are birational maps gluing the affine varieties corresponding to the objects. A quantum variety is a similar groupoid, whose objects are non-commutative deformations of the commutative ones. Then one would want to have a representation of this groupoid on some category of Hilbert spaces. The morphisms are represented by unitary operators that intertwine the representations of the objects. Often, we only need a projective representation of the groupoid, and the lack of it being an ordinary representation yields a 2-cocycle of the groupoid, which sometimes has an interesting interpretation. In this talk I will give an introductory formulation of the above, and go over a couple of examples, about (Segal-)Shale-Weil metaplectic representation of symplectic groups, and about mapping class group representations from quantum Teichmüller theory.
July 06: Jongbaek Song (KIAS) 16:00–17:00 (UTC+9) #Zoom
Toric varieties and Hessenberg varieties
A nilpotent Hessenberg variety and a semisimple Hessenberg variety with fixed Hessenberg function have a cohomological relationship, namely the cohomology ring of the former is isomorphic to the ring of invariant of the latter with respect to the symmetric group action. One extreme case of this relationship is given by Peterson varieties and permutohedral varieties, where the latter are smooth toric varieties. In this talk, we introduce a certain class of toric varieties having orbifold singularities and discuss how these objects interact with Hessenberg varieties from the cohomology ring point of view.
June 29: Xinghua Gao (KIAS) 16:00–17:00 (UTC+9) #Zoom
Heegaard Splitting and Casson's Invariant of 3-manifold
This is an introductory talk on the theory of 3-manifold. In this talk, I will cover the important decomposition of 3-manifold, the Heegaard splitting. Then I will define the Casson invariant for Heegaard splitting, and talk about its properties and applications.
June 22: Sangwook Lee (KIAS) 16:00–17:00 (UTC+9) #Zoom
Mirror symmetry of pairings Slides
We review closed string mirror symmetry as a relation between the quantum cohomology and the Jacobian ring. Compared to the mirror symmetry of their algebra structures, the relation between pairing structures (Poincaré duality pairing and residue pairing resp.) has been far less investigated. I will propose an effective framework towards that problem, and give new examples of equivalences of pairings. This talk is based on works of Cho-L.-Shin and Amorim-Cho-L.
June 15: Hisayoshi Muraki (APCTP) 16:00–17:00 (UTC+9) #Zoom
Integrability of matrix models
Matrix model is known to provide a description of two-dimensional topological gravity on closed surfaces. The two-dimensional topological gravity is equipped with an integrable hierarchy structure known as the KdV hierarchy. The Gaussian integral supplies a toy model as a simpler version of matrix model that inherits an integrable hierarchy structure as with two-dimensional topological gravity, yet it is the Burgers hierarchy rather than the KdV hierarchy. Making use of the Gaussian integral as a miniature, the talk would like to introduce you some notions of integrability in matrix models describing two-dimensional gravity on closed surfaces, and open surfaces, which has been developed recently.
June 8: Lavneet Janagal (KIAS-Physics) 16:00–17:00 (UTC+9) #Zoom
Canceled due to unforeseen circumstances (will be rescheduled to a later date)
Sphere packing in higher than 3-D
I will discuss few best known sphere packings in higher dimensions with special emphasis on the ones which are proved to be optimal packings in $D=8$ and $D=24$.
References:
1. Sphere packings, Lattices and groups by Conway and Sloane.
2. Sphere packing and quantum gravity (arxiv:1905.01319)
May 18: Youngjin Bae (KIAS-Math) 16:00–17:00 (UTC+9) #Zoom
What is Legendrian?
I will explain the role of Legendrians in the study of symplectic geometry, contact topology, and knot theory. Several Legendrian invariants will be introduced including homotopy type invariants, pseudo-holomorphic curve counting method, and generating families. If time permits, I will also talk about how the Legendrian theory interacts with Lagrangian- and microlocal sheaf theory.
May 11: Gilyoung Cheong (University of Michigan) 10:00–11:00 (UTC+9) #Zoom
Pólya enumeration theorems in algebraic geometry, Slides
We will start by comparing Macdonald's formula of the generating function for the symmetric powers of a compact complex manifold and Grothendieck's formula of the zeta series of a projective variety over a finite field, an explicit version of Dwork's rationality result. After seeing a common generalization of the two formulas, we will see how it is related to a classical theorem in combinatorics called Pólya enumeration theorem, which has to do with counting colorings of a graph modulo symmetries.
February 24: Yeping Zhang (KIAS-Math) 17:10–18:10 #1424
Determinant line, Reidemeister metric and Ray–Singer metric
The determinant line of a finite dimensional vector space is its top exterior power. In this talk, I will give several applications of this simple construction.
February 17: Yoshihiko Matsumoto (Osaka University) 17:10–18:10 #1423
On Cartan connections
Riemannian manifolds are infinitesimally Euclidean. Likewise, one may think about geometries in which spaces are infinitesimally modeled on homogeneous spaces––Cartan connections are what describe them. In this talk, I’m going to discuss the naturalness of the idea of Cartan connections, putting some emphasis on the notion of development of curves, and explain what the Cartan connections describing Riemannian and conformal geometry are like. It is worth noting that the Weyl curvature tensor, whose vanishing characterizes the local conformal flatness, is best understood along this line of thought. I'm also planning to touch upon the relation of the conformal Cartan connection to the Fefferman–Graham “ambient metric” construction and to Poincaré-Einstein manifolds.
February 10: Kevin Morand (Sogang University-Physics) 17:10–18:10 #1423
Kontsevich's graph complex and deformation quantization
In the formulation of his celebrated Formality conjecture, M. Kontsevich introduced a graph version of the deformation theory for the Schouten algebra of polyvector fields on a manifold. In this talk, we will review Kontsevich's graph construction and the role it plays in deformation quantization. If time allows, we will discuss possible generalisations of Kontsevich's construction to higher structures.
February 3: It was canceled.
January 27: It was skipped because it is a public holiday (Seollal Holiday)
January 20: Zhihao Duan (KIAS-Physics) 17:10–18:10 #1423
A glimpse of topological string theory
Topological string theory lies at the crossroads between physics and mathematics, and this talk tries to give a glimpse of it. On the physics side, I will review its physical definition and introduce several important developments. On the mathematics side, I will talk about a conjecture known as the Gromov-Witten/Donaldson-Thomas correspondence, formulated by Maulik, Nekrasov, Okounkov and Pandharipande. Finally, we will treat $C^3$ as a toy example and see how combinatorial pictures naturally arise.
January 13: DongSeon Hwang (Ajou University) 17:10–18:10 #1423
A glimpse of Manin's conjecture
Diophantine problems have fascinated many mathematicians throughout the ages. Manin's conjecture provides a precise prediction on some types of Diophantine problems. More precisely, it predicts the asymptotic behavior on the number of rational points of bounded anticanonical height on Fano varieties. In this talk, I will try to explain the historical development of the conjecture and how the geometry governs the arithmetic.
January 6: It was skipped because of the conference: Workshop on Atiyah classes and related topics.
December 23–30: Winter Break
December 16: Yuto Yamamoto (IBS-CGP) 17:10–18:10 #1423
Introduction to tropical geomery
Tropical geometry is algebraic geometry over the max-plus algebra. There is a certain procedure called tropicalization, to associate a tropical algebraic variety with a classical one. It connects tropical geometry with combinatorial aspects of classical algebraic geometry. In this talk, I will explain basic ideas of this field by using a couple of elementary results and simple examples.
December 9: It was skipped.
December 2: Joachim Koenig (KAIST) 17:10–18:10 #1423
Polynomials and their monodromy groups, Abstract
All of these are (more or less) classical arithmetic-geometric problems. Their common feature is that they lead to interesting questions in group theory. I will motivate this connection by introducing monodromy groups of polynomials and explaining how they can be used to attack the above problems. Along the way, I will try to show how group theory can explain some astonishing examples occurring around the above questions.
November 25: Kang-Ju Lee (Seoul National University) 17:10–18:10 #1423
A relationship between commutative algebra and topological combinatorics
In this talk, we explain a relationship between combinatorial commutative algebra and topological combinatorics, and present formulas for the betti numbers arising from ideals defined by graphs and those of simplicial complexes associated with these ideals.
November 18: Jaigyoung Choe (KIAS-Math) 17:10–18:10 #1424
Unknottedness of minimal surfaces in $S^3$
There are two parallels on $R^2$. But there are no parallels on $S^2$. This is mainly why we have no knotted minimal surface in $S^3$.
November 11: WonTae Hwang (KIAS-Math) 17:10–18:10 #1423
Brief Story of Elliptic Curves and Fermat's Last Theorem
In the history of number theory, the Fermat's Last Theorem, proven by Andrew Wiles and Richard Taylor, is one of the deep and beautiful results, in which, at least two seemingly unrelated mathematical areas were used in its proof. Roughly speaking, the theorem was proved by relating the existence of integer solutions of certain Diophantine equations to a special property, called modularity, of the corresponding elliptic curves. This kind of phenomenon occurs many times in various fields of math to reveal the beauty of mathematics. In this talk, we briefly review the story of the FLT (as non-experts) with the aid of the book: Rational Points on Elliptic Curves.
November 4: Daehwan Kim (KIAS-Math) 17:10–18:10 #1423
Solitons for the mean curvature flow and weighted minimal surfaces
The mean curvature flow (MCF) arises from the study of crystal growth, grain growth, image processing and other scientific fields. The reason for these study is that MCF is the negative gradient flow of the area functional and it is a well-known property that any closed (hyper)surface flows in the direction of steepest descent for the area and occurs singularities in finite time under MCF. There are two types of singularities that are type 1 and type 2 represented by the self-similar solution and translating soliton, respectively. In terms of weighted minimal surfaces, these two models are regarded as critical points of the area functional with density $e^{-f}$, which are $f$-minimal surfaces, where $f$ is linear or quadratic function, respectively. In this talk, we observe the relation between solitons for MCF and $f$-minimal surfaces and provide several examples.
October 28: Richard Eager (KIAS-Physics) 17:10–18:10 #1423
What is a BPS state?
BPS states are particles or extended objects in supersymmetric quantum field theories that transform in a short representation of the supersymmetry algebra. One of the main motivations for studying and counting BPS states is to give a microscopic understanding of the Beckenstein--Hawking entropy of supersymmetric black holes. BPS state counting is also closely related to enumerative geometry and Donaldson--Thomas invariants in algebraic geometry. In addition to reviewing the role of BPS states in Seiberg--Witten theory, we give a simple example of BPS state counting for a local Calabi--Yau threefold using exponential networks.
October 21: It was skipped because of the conference: Progress in Several Complex Variables.
October 14: Aeryeong Seo (Kyungpook National Univesity) 17:10–18:10 #1423
Geometry of domains in several complex variables
In this talk, I will introduce some domains(open and connected sets) in several complex variables including domains of holomorphy, pseudoconvex domains, bounded symmetric domains and bounded homogeneous domains. I will also give a brief introduction to some invariant metrics/distances, automorphism groups, scaling methods and their applications.
October 7: Skipped.
September 30: Nessim Sibony (Université Paris-Sud / KIAS) 17:10–18:10 #1423
Entropy
How to measure the complexity of a dynamical system?
A possibility is to count the number of orbits one can distinguish
at a certain scale before time $n$.
Then look at the growth of that function as a function of time and scale.
Amazingly it's possible to end up with a number.
I will discuss notions of entropy and give examples from complex geometry.
September 23: Clifford Blakestad (Postech) 17:10–18:10 #1423
Mathematics from the p-adic perspective
The real numbers are only one of infinitely many completions of the rational numbers. For each prime integer $p$, we define a new metric on the rational numbers by declaring $p$ to be "small," yielding a new completion called the $p$-adic numbers. We will discuss ways to think about these new completions and explore notions such as $p$-adic calculus and $p$-adic manifolds.
September 16: Hsuan-Yi Liao (KIAS-Math) 17:10–18:10 #1423
Deformation of algebra and Hochschild cochains, Notes
I'll explain a problem about deformation of algebra and its relationship with the differential graded Lie algebra of Hochschild cochains. If time permitted, I'll talk about a coalgebra point of view and deformation quantization.
September 9: Matthieu Sarkis (KIAS-Physics) 17:10–18:10 #1423
A connection between algebraic surfaces and Mathieu moonshine
After recalling some background motivational results on moonshine, we will try and motivate in which sense Mathieu moonshine should have to do with an infinite family of algebraic surfaces, hence pointing towards a more global geometric understanding of moonshine phenomena.
September 2: Ryo Suzuki (KIAS-Physics) 17:10–18:10 #1424
Gauge theory correlators from quiver calculus
In Gauge/String Duality, non-planar corrections to the correlators of gauge theory correspond to higher-genus corrections to the string worldsheet. I talk on how to study such quantities by finite-group theory and quiver calculus, whose ultimate goal would be to construct "Riemann surfaces" from permutations.
August 26: Jeonggyu Huh (KIAS-CS) 17:10–18:10 #1423
Introduction to Deep Learning, Slides
I will have a brief talk about deep learning for researchers studying pure mathematics or pure physics. The participants do not have to know about deep learning at all because I will shortly review basic concepts of deep learning (artificial neural network, error back propagation etc). I will also explain how the new method is different from traditional statistics and how it is changing the world.
August 5–19: Summer Break
July 29: Geunho Lim (Indiana University in Bloomington) 17:10–18:10
Cheeger-Gromov $L^2$ rho-invariants of 3-manifolds
Atiyah, Patodi and Singer defined rho-invariants to generalize Hirzebruch signature theorem for Riemannian manifolds with boundary. Cheeger-Gromov extended rho-invariants to $L^2$ rho-invariants. As Chang-Weinberger tried first, $L^2$ method allows us to topologically approach rho-invariants. Cha showed the existence of universal bounds of $L^2$ rho-invariants by using geometric topology. In this talk, we first recall the definition and properties of Cheeger-Gromov $L^2$ rho-invariants including the existence of universal bounds. The goal of this talk is to share geometric topological idea which is used to find explicit bounds. If time permits, I will discuss recent progress on elliptic 3-manifolds.
July 22: Sreedhar Bhamidi (KIAS-Math) 17:10–18:10
What are motives?
Motives refer to a 'universal cohomology theory' for algebraic varieties proposed by Grothendieck in the 1960's. Till date the construction of a category of motives is still conjectural. Regardless, the idea has led to far reaching consequences in Algebraic Geometry and has been a guiding light. The goal of this lecture is to motivate and discuss some conjectures and their implications. The lecture would be elementary and we hope by avoiding technical details we shall be able to get across the underlying ideas surrounding this beautiful theory.
July 15: Sanghyeon Lee (KIAS-Math) 17:10–18:10 #1423
Splitting of genus 1 Gromov-Witten invariants
Gromov-Witten invariant, which can be considered as a number counting curves in a variety, appears in both symplectic/algebraic geometry. When a variety is a complete intersection in a projective space, A. Zinger developed a way to split genus 1 GW invariant (counting genus 1 curves) to reduced invariant and genus 0 invariants. This reduced invariant can be expressed by an Euler class of some vector bundle on some smooth space. This splitting is related to the geometry of moduli space of curves in a variety, which is called stable map space. In this talk, we will talk about the geometry of the genus 1 stable map space and how this give us a way of splitting genus 1 invariants.
July 8: Thomas Goller (KIAS-Math) 17:10–18:10 #1423
Hilbert schemes of points
A famous mathematician's scoring rubric? No no no, that would be "Hilbert's scheme of points". Consider a natural problem: given a geometric space X, construct a new geometric space that parametrizes all subsets of X that contain exactly k points. This is not difficult to do. But now suppose that we want to compactify our new space. Then we need a plan for dealing with the issue of several points "colliding". I will describe a nice way of solving this problem in algebraic geometry and discuss some remarkable features of the resulting spaces. The most technical detail will be the grammatical remark made at the beginning of this paragraph.
July 1: Min Hoon Kim (KIAS-Math) 17:10–18:10 #1423
Spheres
Spheres, the simplest examples of closed manifolds, are central objects in geometric topology. Initiated by Poincare, topologists have considered homotopy spheres (manifolds which are homotopy equivalent to spheres). In this introductory talk, I will give a survey on homotopy spheres. For the first part, I will discuss celebrated results of Milnor and Smale on homotopy spheres without giving too much details. For the second part of talk, I will discuss well-known examples of homotopy 4-spheres including Cappell-Shaneson spheres and Gluck twists. If time permits, I will discuss recent progress on Cappell-Shaneson spheres which is joint work with Hakho Choi and Motoo Tange.
June 24: Jae Min Lee (KTH Royal Institute of Technology) 17:10–18:10
Geometric investigation of PDEs in hydrodynamics
The goal of this talk is to present a geometric approach on Euler equation for ideal fluid pioneered by V. Arnold, and its applications. Following Arnold, we will first review the motion of a 3-dimensional rigid body and extract the abstract mathematical structure, i.e., geodesic equations on a Lie group endowed with one-sided invariant metrics. We will briefly discuss some technical difficulties arising when we extend this idea to the infinite dimensional setting. Finally, we will highlight some applications to problems in PDEs from fluid mechanics.
June 17: Sungmin Yoo (KIAS-Math) 17:10–18:10 #1423
Generalization of the Poincare metric
As generalization of the Poincare metric, I will introduce two biholmorphically invariant Kahler metrics: Bergman metric and Kahler-Einstein metric. These two metrics play important roles in study of complex manifolds. In this talk, we will survey their properties and relation.
June 10: Christoph Saulder (KIAS-Physics) 17:10–18:10 #1503
Why do we care about early-type galaxies?
We will discuss what early-type galaxies are and how one can identify them in large-scale surveys. Additionally, I will illustrate how distances are measured in the universe and how early-type galaxies and their fundamental plane can be used to do so. I will also explain why this is important for modern cosmology.
June 3: Xiaoxiang Chai (KIAS-Math) 17:10–18:10 #1423
Constructing a minimal surface in a sphere with an arbitrary metric
Given a simple Jordan curve, there is a minimal surface spanning this Jordan curve as its boundary. This result known as Plateau problem is due to Douglas and Rado in the 30s. Douglas was the first Fields medalist. I will start from such basic aspects of minimal surface theory as definition, first variation formula, second variation formula. Later, the talk would be focused on finding minimal surfaces using Almgren-Pitts min-max theory. This part is mostly after Jon Pitts, Gromov, Guth, F. Marques and A. Neves. We present the theory in parallel to the theory of eigenfunctions and eigenvalues so that it would be easier to follow the general idea. In particular, there exists at least one minimal hypersurface in every Riemannian manifold. Recently, it is proved that there exists infinitely many of them. If time permits, we will explain some of these results for generic metrics. Also, if time permits, for people with a physics background, I will mention a quick proof of Schoen-Yau positive mass theorem using minimal surface theory would be sketched. For people with a PDE background, the connection between semilinear PDE and minimal surface would be briefly discussed. These two aspects are related to research of my own.
References:
1. Fernando C. Marques, Andr'e Neves, Existence of infinitely many minimal hypersurfaces in positive Ricci curvature, https://arxiv.org/abs/1311.6501
2. Richard Schoen and Shing Tung Yau, On the proof of the positive mass conjecture in general relativity, Comm. Math. Phys., Volume 65, Number 1 (1979), 45-76.
3. Pedro Gaspar, Marco A. M. Guaraco, The Allen-Cahn equation on closed manifolds, https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.06575
May 27: Hojoo Lee (Seoul National University) 17:10–18:10 #1423
Flat structures on soap films
The modern theory of minimal surfaces offers spectacular applications to, for instance, the three dimensional topology and geometry, positive mass conjecture in mathematical relativity, and the Ricci flow proof of Poincare conjecture. In this talk, we shall present explicit examples of negatively curved minimal surfaces, which can be characterized by flat structures introduced by Chern and Ricci.
[1] Hojoo Lee, Mysteries of Minimal Surfaces, YouTube Video
[2] Joaquin Perez, A new golden age of minimal surfaces, Notices Amer. Math.Soc. 64 (2017), no. 4, 347-358.
[3] Jeremy Gray, Mario Micallef, About the cover: the work of Jesse Douglas on minimal surfaces, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.) 45 (2008), no. 2, 293-302.
May 20: Tomoyuki Hisamoto (Nagoya University) 17:10–18:10 #1424
Geometric flow and the limit
We first look at the plane curve shortening flow in order to get the feeling of general geometric flow. The main topic is the Kähler-Ricci flow, which is the evolution of a metric on the complex manifold. I will explain the relation with the uniformization theorem for complex curve and what happens in higher dimension. This talk may serve as a prelude to my research talk on Wednesday and Thursday.
May 13: Jaepil Lee (Yonsei University) 17:10–18:10 #1423
Bordered Heegaard Floer homology and knot complement, Slides
Lipshitz, Ozsvath and Thurston have developed the bordered Heegaard Floer homology, which is a variant of the Heegaard Floer homology designed for a 3-manifold with boundaries. In this talk I will focus on the bordered Floer chain complex of torus boundary case, especially on a knot complement in 3-sphere and its relation to the knot Floer homology. I will also explain a 2-link complement and knot Floer homology of knots in integral homology sphere.
May 6: It was skipped because it is a public holiday (Children's Day observed).
April 29: Seong-Mi Seo (KIAS-Math) 17:10–18:10 #1423
Universality for random normal matrix ensembles
In the random matrix theory, one of the most important phenomenons is that the local eigenvalue statistics of large random matrices have a universal behavior. I will introduce some universality results for the random normal matrix model and discuss the universality class depending on the location of a point where the local eigenvalue statistics are considered.
April 22: Kyunghwan Song (Ewha Womans University) 17:10–18:10 #1423
The inverses of tails of the Riemann zeta function for some natural numbers and real numbers in critical strip and related topics, Slides
The Riemann zeta function appears in many contexts in mathematics each of which is very interesting. It is also an interesting object to study in other areas such as physics. I would like to introduce the relationship between the Riemann zeta function and the Stefan-Boltzmann law, photon density, and also explain some results regarding the Riemann zeta function and its variations. We begin the talk by introducing the Riemann zeta function, its generalized functions, and their properties. Next, we will see why a reciprocal sum related to the Riemann zeta function is interesting by seeing explicit examples when $s = 2, 3, 4$, and $5$. Afterwards, we present a new result on the reciprocal sum related to the Riemann zeta function at $s = 6$, which is a joint work with WonTae Hwang. Also, we give some bounds of the inverses of tails of the Riemann zeta function on $0 < s < 1$ and compute the integer parts of the inverses of tails of the Riemann zeta function for $s = 1/2, 1/3$, and $1/4$, which is a joint work with Donggyun Kim. Furthermore, we present additional results for $s = 1/d, 2/d$ where $d \ge 2$ is any integer, which is a joint work with WonTae Hwang.
April 15: It was skipped because of the conference: Hyperbolic Geometry, Spectral Geometry and related topics.
April 8: Plinio Murillo (KIAS-Math) 17:10–18:10 #1423
Can one hear the shape of a drum?
Mathematically, a drum can be considered as a bounded region $D$
in the Euclidean plane. The vibration of the drum can be
modelled by the wave equation, and the vibrating frequencies are
codified by the eigenvalues of the Laplacian operator on $D$.
In 1966, Marc Kac popularized the question which has the title of this talk,
and which translates to ask whether the eigenvalues of the Laplacian
determine the geometry of $D$.
In this occasion, we will talk about the history of the problem,
and how its developments have touched different areas of mathematics
such as Analysis, Geometry and Number Theory.
This talk will serve as a prelude to the workshop
"Hyperbolic Geometry, Spectral Geometry and related topics"
to be held at KIAS from April 15th to 19th.
April 1: Jean-Emile Bourgine (KIAS-QUC) 17:10–18:10 #1424
Integrable systems, quantum groups and string theory.
Quantum integrable systems are a special class of quantum systems in which exact calculations are possible. They play an essential role in physics, from descriptions of magnetism and cold atoms to (supersymmetric) particle physics and string theory. Exact methods have been developed for explointing the rich underlying mathematical structure of symmetries called "quantum group". In this talk, I will explain what a quantum group is, how it appears in quantum systems, and briefly mention an application to a particular problem in string theory.
March 25: Chul-hee Lee (KIAS-Math) 17:10–18:10 #1424
Dilogarithm function and applications
The dilogarithm function is a special function of a single variable. It appears in several different contexts of mathematics, such as algebraic K-theory, hyperbolic geometry, cluster algebras and mathematical physics. I will explain the basic properties of the dilogarithm function, with a focus on the functional identities satisfied by it, and its applications to computing volumes of hyperbolic 3-manifolds.
March 18: Makoto Miura (KIAS-Math) 5pm #1424
Grassmann tensors in algebraic vision
Algebraic vision is a new research area that aims to look at geometric problems in computer vision using algebro-geometric methods. In this talk, I will give an overview on this area with particular emphasis on the Grassmann tensors, which are one of the main ideas for the reconstruction problems and are also used in realistic algorithms.
March 11: Carlos Scarinci (KIAS-CMC) 5pm #1423
3-dimensional anti-de Sitter geometry and Teichmüller theory
In this introductory talk I will give an overview on anti-de Sitter geometry (AdS) in dimension 3 and its relation to Teichmüller theory. The idea is to focus on the basic definitions and on some core ideas on the use of 3d geometry in Teichmüller theory.