In 1970, Furstenberg made a number of conjectures about the expansions of real numbers in non-comensurable bases, e.g. bases 2 and 3. The most difficult remains wide open, but several related problems, which can be stated in terms of the dimension theory of certain fractal sets, were recently settled. In the first talk I will try to describe the conjectures and some of what was known. In the second talk I will present Meng Wu's proof of the "slice conjecture" (it was also proved independently by Pablo Shmerkin, and I will try to also say a little about that proof too).
Both talks will be given by Oren Becker. 9:00 - 10:50 Title: Proving stability via hyperfiniteness, graph limits and invariant random subgroups
Abstract: We will discuss stability in permutations, mostly in the context of amenable groups. We will characterize stable groups among amenable groups in terms of their invariant random subgroups. Then, we will introduce graph limits and hyperfinite graphings (and some theorems about them), and show how the aforementioned characterization of stability follows.
Second part of the talk from last week:
An ergodic system (X;B; μ; T) is said to have the weak Pinsker
property if for any ε > 0 one can express the system as the direct
product of two systems with the first having entropy less than ε and
the second one being isomorphic to a Bernoulli system. The problem
as to whether or not this property holds for all systems was open for
more than forty years and has been recently settled in the affirmative
in a remarkable work by Tim Austin.
I will begin by describing why Jean-Paul formulated this prob-
Let $\Sigma$ be a Riemann surface of genus $g \geq 2$, and p be a point on $\Sigma$. We define a space $S_g(t)$ consisting of certain irreducible representations of the fundamental group of $\Sigma \setminus p$, modulo conjugation by SU(n). This space has interpretations in algebraic geometry, gauge theory and topological quantum field theory; in particular if Σ has a Kahler structure then $S_g(t)$ is the moduli space of parabolic vector bundles of rank n over Σ.
I will discuss the inverse Monge-Ampere flow and its applications to the existence, and non-existence, of Kahler-Einstein metrics. To motivate this discussion I will first describe the classical theory of the Donaldson heat flow on a Riemann surface, and its relationship with the Harder-Narasimhan filtration of an unstable vector bundle.
Abstract: The classical theory of metric Diophantine approximation is very well developed and has, in recent years, seen significant advances, partly due to connections with homogeneous dynamics. Several problems in this subject can be viewed as particular examples of a very general setup, that of lattice actions on homogeneous varieties of semisimple groups. The latter setup presents significant challenges, including but not limited to, the non-abelian nature of the objects under study.
The recent work of Abe--Henniart--Herzig--Vigneras gives a classification of irreducible admissible mod-$p$ representations of a $p$-adic reductive group in terms of supersingular representations. However, supersingular representations remain mysterious largely, and in general we know them very little. Up to date, there are only a classification of them for the group $GL_2 (Q_p)$ and a few other closely related cases.
I will review the Kostant-Souriau geometric quantization procedure for
passing from functions on a symplectic manifold (classical observables)
to operators on a Hilbert space (quantum observables).
With the "half-form correction" that is required in this procedure,
one cannot quantize a complex projective space of even complex dimension,
and one cannot equivariantly quantize the two-sphere nor any symplectic
toric manifold.
I will present a geometric quantization procedure that uses metaplectic-c
structures to incorporate the half-form correction into the earlier
A k-dimensional permutation is a (k+1)-dimensional array of zeros
and ones, with exactly a single one in every axis parallel line. We consider the
“number on the forehead" communication complexity of a k-dimensional permutation
and ask how small and how large it can be. We give some initial answers to these questions.
We prove a very weak lower bound that holds for every permutation, and mention a surprising
upper bound. We motivate these questions by describing several closely related problems:
estimating the density Hales-Jewett number, high-dimensional
We will give a short review of various topics discussed in the first semester and last Monday and then we'll pick the fruits: namely, we will show how to get groups which are no approximated.
Abstract:
The study of elastic membranes carrying topological defects has a longstanding history, going back at least to the 1950s. When allowed to buckle in three-dimensional space, membranes with defects can totally relieve their in-plane strain, remaining with a bending energy, whose rigidity modulus is small compared to the stretching modulus.
Abstract:
I will discuss a family of random processes in discrete time related to products of random matrices (product matrix processes). Such processes are formed by singular values of random matrix products, and the number of factors in a random matrix product plays a role of a discrete time. I will explain that in certain cases product matrix processes are discrete-time determinantal point processes, whose correlation kernels can be expressed in terms of double contour integrals. This enables to investigate determinantal processes for products of ra ndom matrices in
