| Institute for Mathematics and its Applications University of Minnesota 400 Lind Hall 207 Church Street SE Minneapolis, MN 55455 |
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Email: staff@ima.umn.edu |
Telephone: (612) 624-6066 |
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Additional newsletters available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/newsletters
Additional newsletters available at http://www.ima.umn.edu/newsletters
IMA Newsletter #423
January 2012
2011-2012 Program
See http://www.ima.umn.edu/2011-2012/ for a full description of the 2011-2012 program on Mathematics of Information.
IMA Events
IMA Workshop
Second Abel Conference: A Celebration of John Milnor
January 30 - February 1, 2012
Organizers: Alejandro Adem (University of British Columbia), Geir Ellingsrud (University of Oslo), Michael J. Hopkins (Harvard University), Robion Kirby (University of California), James Stasheff (University of Pennsylvania)
Schedule
Monday, January 2
| All Day | University Holiday. The IMA is closed. |
Monday, January 9
| 2:30pm-3:00pm | Coffee break | Lind Hall 400 |
Tuesday, January 10
| 2:30pm-3:00pm | Coffee break | Lind Hall 400 |
Wednesday, January 11
| 2:30pm-3:00pm | Coffee break | Lind Hall 400 |
Thursday, January 12
| 2:30pm-3:00pm | Coffee break | Lind Hall 400 |
Friday, January 13
| 2:30pm-3:00pm | Coffee break | Lind Hall 400 |
Monday, January 16
| All Day | Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The IMA is closed. |
Tuesday, January 17
| 2:30pm-3:00pm | Coffee break | Lind Hall 400 |
Wednesday, January 18
| 2:30pm-3:00pm | Coffee break | Lind Hall 400 |
Thursday, January 19
| 2:30pm-3:00pm | Coffee break | Lind Hall 400 |
Friday, January 20
| 2:30pm-3:00pm | Coffee break | Lind Hall 400 |
Monday, January 23
| 2:30pm-3:00pm | Coffee break | Lind Hall 400 |
Tuesday, January 24
| 2:30pm-3:00pm | Coffee break | Lind Hall 400 | ||
| 3:00pm-4:00pm | TBD | Mary Therese Padberg (University of Iowa) | Lind Hall 305 | PS |
Wednesday, January 25
| 2:30pm-3:00pm | Coffee break | Lind Hall 400 |
Thursday, January 26
| 12:00pm-1:00pm | MSI Presentation | Lind Hall 305 | S | |
| 2:30pm-3:00pm | Coffee break | Lind Hall 400 |
Friday, January 27
| 2:30pm-3:00pm | Coffee break | Lind Hall 400 |
Monday, January 30
| 10:00am-11:00am | Registration and coffee | Keller Hall 3-176 | SW1.30-2.1.12 | |
| 11:00am-11:15am | Welcome to the IMA | Keller Hall 3-180 | SW1.30-2.1.12 | |
| 11:15am-12:15pm | Exotic spheres via topological modular forms | Mark Behrens (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) | Keller Hall 3-180 | SW1.30-2.1.12 |
| 12:15pm-2:00pm | Lunch | SW1.30-2.1.12 | ||
| 2:00pm-3:00pm | Dynamical Milnor | John Fornaess (University of Michigan) | Keller Hall 3-180 | SW1.30-2.1.12 |
| 2:30pm-3:00pm | Coffee break | Lind Hall 400 | ||
| 3:00pm-3:10pm | Group photo | Keller Hall 3-180 | SW1.30-2.1.12 | |
| 3:10pm-3:30pm | Coffee break | Keller Hall 3-176 | SW1.30-2.1.12 | |
| 3:30pm-3:40pm | Film Showing - Niles Johnson will screen his short film on the 7-dimensional exotic sphere | Niles Johnson (University of Georgia) | Keller Hall 3-180 | SW1.30-2.1.12 |
| 3:40pm-4:40pm | Around the genus-minimizing property of algebraic curves. | Peter Kronheimer (Harvard University) | Keller Hall 3-180 | SW1.30-2.1.12 |
| 5:00pm-7:00pm | Reception at the Campus Club Bar Lounge | Campus Club | SW1.30-2.1.12 |
Tuesday, January 31
| 8:30am-9:00am | Coffee | Keller Hall 3-176 | SW1.30-2.1.12 | |
| 9:00am-10:00am | Diffeomorphism groups of some high dimensional manifolds. | Ib Madsen (University of Copenhagen) | Keller Hall 3-180 | SW1.30-2.1.12 |
| 10:00am-10:30am | Coffee break | Keller Hall 3-176 | SW1.30-2.1.12 | |
| 10:30am-11:30am | Geometric structures in dimension four | Gang Tian (Princeton University) | Keller Hall 3-180 | SW1.30-2.1.12 |
| 11:30am-2:00pm | Lunch | SW1.30-2.1.12 | ||
| 2:00pm-3:00pm | An overview of Heegaard Floer homology | Peter Ozsvath (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) | Keller Hall 3-180 | SW1.30-2.1.12 |
| 3:00pm-3:30pm | Coffee break | Keller Hall 3-176 | SW1.30-2.1.12 | |
| 3:30pm-4:30pm | Cobordisms: old and new | Ulrike Tillmann (University of Oxford) | Keller Hall 3-180 | SW1.30-2.1.12 |
| 6:00pm-8:00pm | Banquet at McNamara Alumni Center, Heritage Gallery | McNamara Alumni Center | SW1.30-2.1.12 |
Wednesday, February 1
| 8:30am-9:00am | Coffee | Keller Hall 3-176 | SW1.30-2.1.12 | |
| 9:00am-10:00am | The Milnor Conjectures and Quadratic Forms | Parimala Raman (Emory University) | Keller Hall 3-180 | SW1.30-2.1.12 |
| 10:00am-10:30am | Coffee break | Keller Hall 3-176 | SW1.30-2.1.12 | |
| 10:30am-11:30am | A solution to the Arf-Kervaire invariant problem | Douglas Conner Ravenel (University of Rochester) | Keller Hall 3-180 | SW1.30-2.1.12 |
| 11:30am-1:00pm | Lunch | SW1.30-2.1.12 | ||
| 1:00pm-2:00pm | On the homology of Lie groups made discrete | Fabien Morel (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) | Keller Hall 3-180 | SW1.30-2.1.12 |
| 2:00pm-2:05pm | Closing remarks | Keller Hall 3-180 | SW1.30-2.1.12 | |
| 2:30pm-3:00pm | Coffee break | Lind Hall 400 |
Event Legend: |
|
| PS | IMA Postdoc Seminar |
| S | Seminar |
| SW1.30-2.1.12 | Second Abel Conference: A Celebration of John Milnor |
Abstracts
| MSI Presentation | |
| Abstract: Ravi Chityala and Haoyu Yu from the Minnesota Supercomputer Institute will present on the resources available through MSI to postdocs and researchers. Ravi is MSI's Scientific Development and Visualization Lab Manager as well as an image processing and visualization developer. Haoyu is one of the scientific computing consultants and specializes in data mining. | |
| Mark Behrens (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) | Exotic spheres via topological modular forms |
| Abstract: In response to a question of Milnor, a collaboration of Mike Hill, Mike Hopkins, Mark Mahowald, and myself have been attempting to determine in which dimensions exotic spheres exist. We will review the work of Kervaire-Milnor, which reduces the problem to questions in the stable homotopy groups of spheres. Thanks to the solution of the Kervaire invariant one problem, the problem is reduced to producing certain infinite families in the stable stems. I will discuss what we know, and don't know about the stable stems these days, and discuss some joint work with Mark Mahowald, producing a plethora of 192-periodic families (the Hurewicz image of TMF) which give partial answers to the original question. | |
| John Fornaess (University of Michigan) | Dynamical Milnor |
| Abstract: The talk is an introduction to problems and results in Dynamics centering around contributions to the field by Milnor. | |
| Peter Kronheimer (Harvard University) | Around the genus-minimizing property of algebraic curves. |
| Abstract: In his 1968 book on singularities of complex hypersurfaces, Milnor asked a question about the "unknotting number" of knots that arise as the links of singular points of complex plane curves. The question was eventually answered in the affirmative, using gauge theory, by Kronheimer and Mrowka in 1992. A proof requiring only combinatorial techniques was found much later, by Rasmussen, using Khovanov homology. In this talk we will explore a surprising relationship between these two proofs: an interplay between gauge theory and Khovanov homology. | |
| Ib Madsen (University of Copenhagen) | Diffeomorphism groups of some high dimensional manifolds. |
| Abstract: I will discuss the homological structure of the classifying space of 2d-dimensional (d-1)-connected manifolds. This generalizes the case of surfaces where the stable homology was predicted by the Mumford conjecture and the actual homology by the Harer stability theorem. The methods involve rational homotopy theory and surgery theory. | |
| Fabien Morel (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) | On the homology of Lie groups made discrete |
| Abstract: In this talk I will recall and discuss the conjecture of John Milnor on the homology of Lie groups made discrete, as well as its algebraic analogue, the Friedlander conjecture. In a work still partially in progress, we give a proof of that conjecture for algebraic groups G over algebraically closed fields. I will sketch some ideas behind this proof, in particular the role of A1-homotopy theory (already used by V. Voevodsky to prove other conjectures of John Milnor concerning mod 2 Galois cohomology and quadratic forms) and the role of a new object attached to G, its simplicial building. We will emphasize the case G = SL_2, SL_3,... |
|
| Peter Ozsvath (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) | An overview of Heegaard Floer homology |
| Abstract: Heegaard Floer homology is an invariant for knots and three-manifolds defined using methods from Lagrangian Floer homology and symplectic geometry. I will describe a concrete model for computing this invariant for knots in S3. Time permitting, I will turn to some further developments in the theory. The material I will describe is joint with collaborators, including Robert Lipshitz, Ciprian Manolescu, Dylan Thurston, and Zoltán Szabó. | |
| Parimala Raman (Emory University) | The Milnor Conjectures and Quadratic Forms |
| Abstract: The Milnor conjectures relating the graded Witt ring and the mod-2 Galois cohomology ring of a field have been a driving force in the algebraic theory of quadratic forms. The degree 2 norm residue isomorphism, due to Merkurjev, established the first case of the Milnor conjectures and ushered in a new era in the theory of quadratic forms. We shall explain some of the consequences of the Milnor conjectures, with particular reference to invariants of fields associated to quadratic forms. | |
| Douglas Conner Ravenel (University of Rochester) | A solution to the Arf-Kervaire invariant problem |
| Abstract: The 1963 work of Kervaire-Milnor on the classification of exotic spheres in terms of the stable homotopy groups of spheres left one unanswered question in dimensions congruent to two modulo four. Subsequent work by Brown-Peterson and Browder gave the answer in all dimensions that are not two less than a power of two. We solve the problem in all remaining cases except 126. Our answer is the opposite of the one that many sought in the 1970s. | |
| Gang Tian (Princeton University) | Geometric structures in dimension four |
| Abstract: For the last 50 years or longer, it has been a basic question in topology to study differential structures of a given manifold. In the early 80's, Donaldson used anti-self solutions of the Yang-Mills equation to study differentiable 4-manifolds and construct a very useful class of differentiable invariants for 4-manifolds. In particular, he was able to show that a topological 4-manifold may have different differentiable structures. In this talk, I will discuss geometric methods in studying 4-manifolds and in particular, some recent progress. | |
| Ulrike Tillmann (University of Oxford) | Cobordisms: old and new |
| Abstract: Cobordisms have played an important role in the classification of manifolds ever since the 1950s. In a different way, they are fundamental to the mathematical formulation for topological quantum field theory. We will explain how recent results shed new light on both theories. | |
Visitors in Residence
| Alejandro Adem | University of British Columbia | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Anar Akhmedov | University of Minnesota | 1/30/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Brendan P.W. Ames | University of Minnesota | 8/31/2011 - 8/30/2012 |
| Arindam Banerjee | University of Minnesota | 9/1/2011 - 6/30/2012 |
| Hyman Bass | University of Michigan | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Maria Basterra | University of New Hampshire | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Mark Behrens | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 1/29/2012 - 1/31/2012 |
| Julie Bergner | University of California, Riverside | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Andrew John Beveridge | Macalester College | 9/1/2011 - 5/15/2012 |
| Jodi Black | Bucknell University | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Sergey G Bobkov | University of Minnesota | 9/1/2011 - 6/30/2012 |
| William Browder | Princeton University | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Luca Capogna | University of Minnesota | 8/15/2011 - 6/10/2012 |
| Sylvain Edward Cappell | New York University | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Aycil Cesmelioglu | University of Minnesota | 9/30/2010 - 8/30/2012 |
| Paolo Codenotti | University of Minnesota | 9/1/2011 - 8/30/2012 |
| Frederick R. Cohen | University of Rochester | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Jintao Cui | University of Minnesota | 8/31/2010 - 8/30/2012 |
| Xiaoyi Cui | University of Minnesota | 1/30/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Isabel K. Darcy | University of Iowa | 9/1/2011 - 6/30/2012 |
| James F Davis | Indiana University | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| William G. Dwyer | University of Notre Dame | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Geir Ellingsrud | University of Oslo | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Leonardo Espin | NONE | 9/1/2011 - 6/30/2012 |
| John Fornaess | University of Michigan | 1/28/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Søren Galatius | Stanford University | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Tingran Gao | Duke University | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Carlos Andres Garavito-Garzon | University of Minnesota | 9/8/2011 - 6/30/2012 |
| Stefan M. Giovan | University of Texas at Dallas | 1/9/2012 - 1/15/2012 |
| Samuel Gitler | CINVESTAV | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Paul Goerss | Northwestern University | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Robert Gulliver | University of Minnesota | 1/30/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Ian Hambleton | McMaster University | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Michael Hill | University of Virginia | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Michael J. Hopkins | Harvard University | 1/28/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Yulia Hristova | University of Minnesota | 9/1/2010 - 8/31/2012 |
| Dale Husemoller | Max Planck Institute for Mathematics | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Bjørn Jahren | University of Oslo | 1/29/2012 - 2/2/2012 |
| Niles Johnson | University of Georgia | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Donald Kahn | University of Minnesota | 1/30/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Hee Jung Kim | Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Robion Kirby | University of California, Berkeley | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Peter Kronheimer | Harvard University | 1/29/2012 - 1/31/2012 |
| Kee Yuen Lam | University of British Columbia | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Tsit Yuen Lam | University of California, Berkeley | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Tyler Lawson | University of Minnesota | 1/30/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Gilad Lerman | University of Minnesota | 9/1/2011 - 6/30/2012 |
| Stephen D. Levene | University of Texas at Dallas | 1/9/2012 - 1/15/2012 |
| Tian-Jun Li | University of Minnesota | 1/30/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Wenbo Li | University of Delaware | 9/1/2011 - 5/30/2012 |
| Ayelet Lindenstrauss | Indiana University | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Xin Liu | University of Minnesota | 8/31/2011 - 8/30/2012 |
| Tom Lyche | University of Oslo | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Shiqian Ma | University of Minnesota | 8/31/2011 - 8/30/2013 |
| Ib Madsen | University of Copenhagen | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Yu (David) Mao | University of Minnesota | 8/31/2010 - 8/30/2012 |
| Albert Marden | University of Minnesota | 1/30/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Gabriela Martínez | University of Minnesota | 8/31/2011 - 8/30/2013 |
| John McCleary | Vassar College | 1/29/2012 - 2/2/2012 |
| Dusa McDuff | Barnard College | 1/27/2012 - 2/2/2012 |
| William Messing | University of Minnesota | 1/30/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| John Milnor | SUNY | 1/27/2012 - 2/2/2012 |
| Dimitrios Mitsotakis | University of Minnesota | 10/27/2010 - 8/31/2012 |
| Jack Morava | Johns Hopkins University | 1/29/2012 - 2/2/2012 |
| Fabien Morel | Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München | 1/28/2012 - 2/2/2012 |
| Walter Neumann | Barnard College | 1/29/2012 - 1/31/2012 |
| Peter J. Olver | University of Minnesota | 1/30/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Kent Orr | Indiana University | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Peter Ozsvath | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Mary Therese Padberg | University of Iowa | 8/16/2011 - 1/26/2012 |
| Hyungju Park | Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Erik Kjær Pedersen | University of Copenhagen | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Candice Renee Price | University of Iowa | 8/1/2011 - 7/31/2012 |
| Weifeng (Frederick) Qiu | University of Minnesota | 8/31/2010 - 8/30/2012 |
| Anca Ruxandra Radulescu | University of Colorado | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Parimala Raman | Emory University | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Andrew Ranicki | University of Edinburgh | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Douglas Conner Ravenel | University of Rochester | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Victor Reiner | University of Minnesota | 1/30/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Dale Preston Odin Rolfsen | University of British Columbia | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Jeff A. Rosoff | Gustavus Adolphus College | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Lee Rudolph | Clark University | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Guillermo R. Sapiro | University of Minnesota | 9/1/2011 - 5/31/2012 |
| Radmila Sazdanović | University of Pennsylvania | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Robert Glenn Scharein | Hypnagogic Software | 1/5/2012 - 2/4/2012 |
| George R Sell | University of Minnesota | 1/30/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Laurence Carl Siebenmann | Université de Paris XI (Paris-Sud) | 1/29/2012 - 2/3/2012 |
| Steven Sperber | University of Minnesota | 1/30/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Arthur Szlam | University of Minnesota | 8/31/2011 - 8/30/2012 |
| Gang Tian | Princeton University | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Ulrike Tillmann | University of Oxford | 1/28/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Victor Turchin | Kansas State University | 1/29/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Divyanshu Vats | University of Minnesota | 8/31/2011 - 8/30/2012 |
| Jonathan Wahl | University of North Carolina | 1/30/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Lan Wang | University of Minnesota | 1/19/2012 - 5/12/2012 |
| Helen Wong | Carleton College | 1/30/2012 - 2/1/2012 |
| Lingzhou Xue | University of Minnesota | 9/1/2011 - 6/30/2012 |
| Teng Zhang | University of Minnesota | 8/31/2011 - 8/30/2012 |
Legend:
Postdoc or Industrial Postdoc
Long-term Visitor
IMA Affiliates:
Arizona State University, Boeing, Colorado State University, Corning Incorporated, ExxonMobil, Ford, General Motors, Georgia Institute of Technology, Honeywell, IBM, Indiana University, Iowa State University, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lockheed Martin, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Medtronic, Michigan State University, Michigan Technological University, Mississippi State University, Northern Illinois University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Portland State University, Purdue University, Rice University, Sandia National Laboratories, Schlumberger Cambridge Research, Schlumberger-Doll, Seoul National University, Siemens, Telcordia, Texas A & M University, University of Central Florida, University of Chicago, University of Delaware, University of Houston, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Iowa, University of Kentucky, University of Maryland, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, University of North Carolina, University of Notre Dame, University of Pennsylvania, University of Pittsburgh, University of Tennessee, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Wyoming, US Air Force Research Laboratory, Wayne State University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Zhejiang University