Category Archives: Uncategorized

Quantitative Convergence of Semiclassical Particle Trajectories

The HADES seminar on Tuesday, September 27th will be at 3:30 pm in Room 740.

Speaker: Yonah Borns-Weil

Abstract: We study the trajectories of a quantum particle in a detector under repeated indirect measurement, in the semiclassical regime. We extend the results of Benoist, Fraas, and Fröhlich to discrete-time quantum maps on the quantized torus, and provide the first numerics illustrating the results. In addition, we derive quantitative bounds on the convergence to a classical trajectory based on classical dynamical measures of chaos of the system. No prior knowledge of quantum mechanics will be assumed. This is joint work with Izak Oltman.

Heat Trace Asymptotics for the Generalized Harmonic Oscillator on Scattering Manifolds

The HADES seminar on Tuesday, September 20th will be at 3:30 pm in Room 740.

Speaker: Moritz Doll

Abstract: On a scattering manifold, we consider a Schrödinger operator of the form
$H = -\Delta + V(x)$, where the potential satisfies a growth condition that
generalizes quadratic growth for Euclidean space. These types of
operators were first investigated by Wunsch, who proved a relationship
between singularities of the wave trace and a Hamiltonian flow. On the
other hand, it is easy to see that the heat trace is smooth away from
$t=0$ and our goal is to calculate the asymptotic expansion of the heat
trace as $t \to 0$. We follow the approach of Melrose by constructing a
suitable space on which the integral kernel of the heat operator is
smooth and then using the push-forward theorem to calculate the heat
trace asymptotics. This is based on ongoing joint work with Daniel Grieser.

Solitary waves for infinite depth gravity water waves with constant vorticity

The HADES seminar on Tuesday, September 13th will be at 3:30 pm in Room 740.

Speaker: James Rowan

Abstract:The existence of solitary waves has been a key question for mathematical models of water waves since the 1830s. The model I will discuss is the infinite depth, gravity, zero surface tension case in the presence of nonzero constant vorticity, a model that applies in settings with countercurrents. Because the infinite depth gravity water waves equations with constant vorticity are well-approximated (on a suitable timescale) by the Benjamin-Ono equation, which has solitary waves, one might expect a solitary wave to exist. We show that this is indeed the case, and that this wave is close to the solitary wave for the Benjamin-Ono soliton. This work is joint with Lizhe Wan.

The magic of Schur complement formula

The HADES seminar on Tuesday, September 6th will be at 3:30 pm in Room 740.

Speaker: Zhongkai Tao

Abstract: The Schur complement formula is a very simple formula in linear algebra. Yet it is very useful in spectral theory. I will introduce the Schur complement formula and talk about how to use it to prove a strong convergence of kinetic Brownian motion to the Laplace operator on locally symmetric spaces. This is joint work with Qiuyu Ren.

Examples of Hölder-Stable Phase Retrieval

The HADES seminar on Tuesday, May 10 will be at 3:30 pm in Room 1015 (Notice the room change).

Speaker: Benjamin Pineau

Abstract: Let $(X, \mathcal A, \mu)$ be a measure space. Let $V$ be a closed subspace of the (real or complex) Hilbert space $L^2 = L^2 (\mu)$. We say that $V$ does Holder-stable phase retrieval if there exists a constant $C < \infty$ and $\gamma \in (0, 1]$ such that \begin{equation}\label{eq} \min_{|z|=1} \|f − zg\|_{L^2} \leq C\||f| − |g|\|_{L^2}^\gamma (\|f\|_{L^2} + \|g\|_{L^2} )^{1−γ}\,\forall f, g \in V,(*)\end{equation}

Recently, Calderbank, Daubechies, Freeman, and Freeman have studied real subspaces of real-valued $L^2$ for which (*) holds with $\gamma = 1$ and constructed the first examples of such infinite-dimensional subspaces. In this situation, if $|f|$ is known then $f$ is uniquely determined almost everywhere up to an unavoidably arbitrary global phase factor of $\pm 1$. Moreover, if $|f|$ is known within a small tolerance in norm then up to such a global phase factor, f is determined within a correspondingly small tolerance. This issue arises for instance in crystallography, where one seeks to recover an unknown function $F \in L^2 (\mathbb R)$ from the absolute value of its Fourier transform $\hat F$.

In this talk, I will discuss a set of simple sufficient conditions for constructing infinite-dimensional (real and complex) subspaces $V \subset L^2 (\mu)$ which satisfy (*) and show how to construct some natural examples in which (*) holds. These examples include certain variants of Rademacher series and lacunary Fourier series. This is a joint work with Michael Christ and Mitchell Taylor.

Implicitly Oscillatory Multilinear Integrals

The HADES seminar on Tuesday, May 3rd will be at 3:30 pm in Room 740.

Speaker: Michael Christ

Abstract: An archetypal (bilinear) oscillatory integral inequality states that $$ \Big| \iint_{\mathbb{R}^d\times\mathbb{R}^d} f(x)\,g(y)\,e^{i\lambda\phi(x,y)}\,\eta(x,y)\,dx\,dy\Big|\le C|\lambda|^{-\gamma} \|{f}\|_{L^2}\|{g}\|_{L^2}$$ where $\lambda\in\mathbb{R}$ is a large parameter, $\phi$ is a smooth real-valued phase function which is nondegenerate in a suitable sense, $f,g$ are arbitrary $L^2$ functions, $\eta$ is a  smooth compactly supported cutoff function, and $\gamma>0$ and $C<\infty$ depend on $\phi$ but not on $f,g,\lambda$. Its main features are the decaying factor $|\lambda|^{-\gamma}$, the absence of any smoothness hypothesis on the measurable factors $f,g$, and the interplay between the structure of $\phi$ and the product structure of $f(x)\,g(y)$. If $\phi$ is nonconstant then $e^{i\lambda\phi}$ oscillates rapidly, creating cancellation that potentially results in smallness of the integral.

Implicitly oscillatory integrals involve no overtly oscillatory factor $e^{i\lambda\phi}$; instead, the measurable factors $f_j$ are themselves assumed to be oscillatory, but in a less structured way. A multilinear integral of this type takes the form \[ \int_{\mathbb{R}^2} \prod_{j=1}^N (f_j\circ\varphi_j)(x)\,\eta(x)\,dx\] where $\varphi_j:\mathbb{R}^2\to\mathbb{R}^1$ are smooth submersions, and the functions $f_j$ are merely measurable. The desired upper bound is expressed in terms of strictly negative order Sobolev norms of these functions. Thus the functions $f_j$ are rapidly oscillatory in the sense that they consist mainly of high frequency components.

I will give an introduction to recent (and ongoing) work on this topic, and on associatedsublevel set inequalities.

Bounds for spectral projectors on Riemannian manifolds

The HADES seminar on Tuesday, April 26 will be at 3:30 pm in Room 740.

Speaker: Pierre Germain

Abstract: On a Riemannian manifold, consider the spectral projector on a thin spectral band $[\lambda , \lambda + \delta]$ for the Laplace-Beltrami operator. What is its operator norm from $L^2$ to $L^q$? Or, to put it in semiclassical terms, how large can the $L^p$ norm of a quasimode normalized in $L^2$ be? This is a fascinating problem, which is closely related to a number of fundamental analytic questions. I will try and describe what is known, and some recent progress that have been made. There will be some overlap with my talk at the Analysis seminar, but not much.

“Free” constructions in analysis

The HADES seminar on Tuesday, April 19 will be at 3:30 pm in Room 740.

Speaker: Mitchell Taylor

Abstract: We will discuss some aspects of the nonlinear geometry of function spaces, and how “free” constructions can shed light on such problems. The goal will be to show that certain nonlinear properties of function spaces are actually equivalent to linear ones.

Forty Years of Calderón’s Problem

The HADES seminar on Tuesday, April 12 will be at 3:30 pm in Room 740.

Speaker: Gunther Uhlmann

Abstract: Calderón’s problem (also called electrical impedance tomography) asks
the question of whether one can determine the electrical conductivity
of a medium by making voltage and current measurements at the
boundary. I will give a survey of some of the progress made on this
problem, including the more recent progress on solving similar
problems for nonlinear equations and nonlocal operators.

Galilean Theory of Dispersion and Scattering: Conservation laws, Blind Cones and the Increase of Uncertainty

The HADES seminar on Tuesday, April 5 will be at 3:30 pm in Room 740.

Speaker: Nima Moini

Abstract: In this talk, I will sketch a new approach to the study of kinetic equations solely under the assumption of conservation laws. The new idea is based on an uncertainty principle, the introduction of blind cones with respect to an observer and the Galilean invariance of different inertial frames of reference. In fact, as the uncertainty inevitably increases with time, particles will move away in an asymptotically radial manner from any fixed observer thereby establishing a new notion of dispersion. The generality of this approach reveals a mathematical relationship between the Landau and Boltzmann equations in the context of “the grazing collisions”, which until now was solely phenomenological. Moreover, I will discuss a new scattering theory for the kinetic equations and demonstrate its utility in the case of the Boltzmann equation for hard spheres. The new framework improves upon the existing results by proving the asymptotic completeness of the solutions of the Boltzmann equation near an equilibrium in the  $L^\infty$ setting. In particular, for any solution to the transport equation, there are arbitrarily close in $L^\infty$  norm, scattered solutions of the Boltzmann equation, this implies that solutions of the Boltzmann equation defined over the whole space will not converge to the state of thermodynamic equilibrium.