Calendar
- 30March 30, 2023
CMSA General Relativity: Gravitational perturbations near to extreme Kerr
20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138Gravitational perturbations of a black hole illustrate the invaluable synergy between theory, experiment, and numerical simulations in general relativity. A recent development in the theory side has been the identification of the relevant degrees of freedom describing the low energy physics driving a black hole away from extremality. For simple cases, this low energy sector determines important aspects of the gravitational backreaction, and several properties that are key to our microscopic (quantum) understanding of black hole physics.In this talk I will discuss these developments in the context of the (near-)extreme Kerr black hole. In particular, I will revisit the spectrum of linear axisymmetric gravitational perturbations of this black hole. The aim is to characterise those perturbations that are responsible for the deviations away from extremality, and to contrast them with the linearized perturbations treated in the Newman-Penrose formalism. I will show that for Kerr the low-lying mode sector is subtle and intricate—features that their charged spherical symmetric cousins do not display. This unveils new clues on how to decode a microscopic, and holographic, understanding of the Kerr black hole.This seminar will be in person at CMSA, 20 Garden St, Room G-10, but will also be simultaneously broadcast over Zoom. For more information on how to join, please see: https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/event_category/general-relativity/
CMSA Active Matter: The Role of Orientational Order in Development
20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138Morphogenesis, the process through which genes generate form, establishes tissue scale order as a template for constructing the complex shapes of the body plan. The extensive growth required to build these ordered substrates is fueled by cell proliferation, which, naively, should disrupt order. Understanding how active morphogenetic mechanisms couple cellular and mechanical processes to generate order remains an outstanding question in animal development. I will review the statistical mechanics of orientational order and discuss the observation of a fourfold orientationally ordered phase (tetratic) in the model organism Parhyale hawaiensis. I will also discuss theoretical mechanisms for the formation of orientational order that require both motility and cell division, with support from self-propelled vertex models of tissue. The aim is to uncover a robust, active mechanism for generating global orientational order in a non-equilibrium system that then sets the stage for the development of shape and form.
This seminar will be held in person and on Zoom. For more information on how to join, please see: https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/event_category/active-matter-seminar/
Thursday Seminar: The coniveau tower
1 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 USANo additional detail for this event.
Algebraic Dynamics Seminar: Arboreal Galois groups with colliding critical points
Let f(z) be a rational function of degree d>1 over a field K (usually K=C(t) or K=Q), and let x_0 be a point in P^1(K). The Galois groups of the equations f^n(z)=x_0 are known as arboreal Galois groups because they induce an action on a d-ary rooted tree. In 2013, Pink observed that when d=2 and the two critical points c_1, c_2 collide, meaning that f^m(c_1)=f^m(c_2) for some m>0, then the arboreal Galois groups are strictly smaller than the full automorphism group of the tree. We study these arboreal Galois groups when f is either a quadratic rational function or a cubic polynomial. When the critical points collide, we describe the maximum possible Galois groups in these cases, and we find sufficient conditions for these maximum groups to be attained.
For more information, please see: Algebraic Dynamics Seminar at Harvard