Calendar

In this talk, I will discuss the behavior of positivity, hyperbolicity, and Kodaira dimension under smooth morphisms of complex quasi-projective manifolds. This includes a vast generalization of a classical result: a fibration from a projective surface of non-negative Kodaira dimension to a projective line has at least three singular fibers. Furthermore, I will explain a proof of Popa’s conjecture on the superadditivity of the log Kodaira dimension over bases of dimension at most three. These theorems are applications of the main technical result, namely the logarithmic base change theorem.

Many decision and optimization problems over random structures exhibit an apparent gap between the existentially optimal values and algorithmically achievable values. Examples include the problem of finding a largest independent set in a random graph, the problem of finding a near ground state in a spin glass model, the problem of finding a satisfying assignment in a random constraint satisfaction problem, and many many more. Unfortunately,  at the same time no formal computational hardness results exist  which  explains this persistent algorithmic gap.

In the talk we will describe a new approach for establishing an algorithmic intractability for these problems called the overlap gap property. Originating in statistical physics theory of spin glasses, this is a simple to describe property which a) emerges in most models known to exhibit an apparent algorithmic hardness; b) is consistent with the hardness/tractability phase transition for many models analyzed to the day; and, importantly, c) allows to mathematically rigorously rule out a large class of algorithms as potential contenders, specifically the algorithms which exhibit a form of stability/noise insensitivity.

We will specifically show how to use this property to obtain stronger (stretched exponential) than the state of the art (quasi-polynomial) lower bounds on the size of constant depth Boolean circuits for solving the two of the aforementioned problems: the problem of finding a large independent set in a sparse random graph, and the problem of finding a near ground state of a p-spin model.

Joint work with Aukosh Jagannath and Alex Wein

Elliptic curves E over the rational numbers are modular: this means there is a nonconstant map from a modular curve to E. When instead the coefficients of E belong to a function field, it still makes sense to talk about the modularity of E (and this is known), but one can also extend the idea further and ask whether E is ‘r-modular’ for r=2,3… . To define this generalization, the modular curve gets replaced with Drinfeld’s concept of a ‘shtuka space’. The r-modularity of E is predicted by Tate’s conjecture. In joint work with Adam Logan, we give some classes of elliptic curves E which are 2- and 3-modular.

Title: TBA

Abstract: TBA

I will discuss an approach to log-Sobolev inequalities that  combines the Bakry-Emery theory with renormalisation and present several  applications. These include log-Sobolev inequalities with polynomial  dependence for critical Ising models on Z^d when d>4 and singular SPDEs  with uniform dependence of the log-Sobolev constant on both the  regularisation and the volume. The talk is based on joint works with  Thierry Bodineau and Benoit Dagallier.

This seminar will be held on Zoom. They will also project the Zoom in the seminar room G-10 at CMSA, 20 Garden Street. For more information on how to join, please see: https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/event_category/probability-seminar/

This seminar will be held in Science Center 530 at 4:00pm on Wednesday, February 8th.

Please see the seminar page for more details: https://www.math.harvard.edu/~ctm/sem

Quasinormal modes of gravitational waves and Ruelle resonances in hyperbolic classical dynamics share many general properties and can be considered “scattering resonances”: they appear in expansions of correlations, as poles of Green functions and are associated to trapping of trajectories (and are both notoriously hard to observe in nature, unlike, say, quantum resonances in chemistry or scattering poles in acoustical scattering). I will present a mathematical perspective that also includes zeros of the Riemann zeta function (scattering resonances for the Hamiltonian given by the Laplacian on the modular surface) and stresses the importance of different kinds of trapping phenomena, resulting, for instance, in fractal counting laws for resonances.

The CMSA will host a series of three 90-minute lectures on the subject of machine learning for protein folding.

Thursday, Feb 9, 2023:  3:30–5:00 pm ET

Thursday, Feb 16, 2023:  3:30–5:00 pm ET

Thursday, March 9, 2023: 3:30–5:00 pm ET

Further details TBA.

Quantum systems in 3+1-dimensions that are invariant under gauging a one-form symmetry enjoy novel non-invertible duality symmetries encoded by topological defects. These symmetries are renormalization group invariants which constrain infrared dynamics. We show that such non-invertible symmetries often forbid a symmetry-preserving vacuum state with a gapped spectrum, leaving only two possibilities for the infrared dynamics: a gapless state or spontaneous breaking of the non-invertible symmetries. These non-invertible symmetries are realized in lattice gauge theories, which serve to illustrate our results.

For more information on how to join, please see: https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/event_category/quantum-matter-seminar/

Heegaard Floer homology is an invariant of 3-manifolds, and knots and links within them, introduced by P. Oszváth and Z. Szabó in the early 2000s. Because of its relative computability by the standards of gauge and Floer theoretic invariants, it has enjoyed considerably popularity. However, it is not immediately obvious from the construction that Heegaard Floer homology is natural, that is, that it assigns to a basepointed 3-manifold a well-defined module over an appropriate base ring rather than an isomorphism class of modules, and well-defined cobordism maps to 4-manifolds with boundary. This situation was improved in the 2010s when A. Juhász, D. Thurston, and I. Zemke showed naturality of the various versions of Heegaard Floer homology. In this talk we consider involutive Heegaard Floer homology, a refinement of the theory introduced by C. Manolescu and I in 2015, whose definition relies on Juhász-Thurston-Zemke naturality but which is itself not obviously natural even given their results. We prove that involutive Heegaard Floer homology is a natural invariant of basepointed 3-manifolds together with a framing of the basepoint, and has well-defined maps associated to cobordisms, and discuss some consequences and implications. This is joint work with J. Hom, M. Stoffregen, and I. Zemke.