A Long Exact Sequence in Symmetry Breaking

CMSA Room G10 CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

Quantum Matter Seminar Speaker: Cameron Krulewski (MIT) and Leon Liu (Harvard) Title: A Long Exact Sequence in Symmetry Breaking Abstract: We study defects in symmetry breaking phases, such as domain walls, vortices, and hedgehogs. In particular, we focus on the localized gapless excitations that sometimes occur at the cores of these objects. These are topologically protected by an ’t […]

Peano: Learning Formal Mathematical Reasoning Without Human Data

CMSA Room G10 CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

https://youtu.be/a2S_-pl6onM New Technologies in Mathematics Seminar Speaker: Gabriel Poesia, Dept. of Computer Science, Stanford University Title: Peano: Learning Formal Mathematical Reasoning Without Human Data Abstract: Peano is a theorem proving environment in which a computational agent can start tabula rasa in a new domain, learn to solve problems through curiosity-driven exploration, and create its own higher level […]

Fitting ellipsoids to random points

Virtual

Probability Seminar Speaker: Antoine Maillard (ETH Zürich) Title: Fitting ellipsoids to random points Abstract: We consider the problem of exactly fitting an ellipsoid (centered at 0) to n standard Gaussian random vectors in dimension d, for very large n and d. This problem has connections to questions in statistical learning and theoretical computer science, and is […]

Nuclear chromodynamics: non-equilibrium phase transition in the nucleus of a living cell

CMSA Room G10 CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

Active Matter Seminar Speaker: Alexander Grosberg (NYU) Title: Nuclear chromodynamics: non-equilibrium phase transition in the nucleus of a living cell Abstract: Nucleus of a living cell houses a cell genome - a polymer called chromatin, which is a functional form of DNA.  It is very long, e.g., 2 meters long for every human cell.  Nucleus is […]

Uniqueness of Landau levels and their analogs with higher Chern numbers

CMSA Room G10 CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

https://youtu.be/Jf8ONC2tUfc Topological Quantum Matter Seminar Speaker: Bruno Mera, Instituto Superior Tecnico Title: Uniqueness of Landau levels and their analogs with higher Chern numbers Abstract: Lowest Landau level wavefunctions are eigenstates of the Hamiltonian of a charged par- ticle in two dimensions under a uniform magnetic field. They are known to be holomorphic both in real and momentum spaces, […]

Stacky small resolutions of determinantal octic double solids and noncommutative Gopakumar-Vafa invariants

CMSA Room G10 CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

Algebraic Geometry in String Theory Seminar Speaker: Sheldon Katz, UIUC Title: Stacky small resolutions of determinantal octic double solids and noncommutative Gopakumar-Vafa invariants Abstract:  A determinantal octic double solid is the double cover X of P^3 branched along the degree 8 determinant of a symmetric matrix of homogeneous forms on P^3.  These X are nodal […]

Koszul duality in QFT

CMSA Room G10 CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

Speaker: Brian Williams (Boston University) Title: Koszul duality in QFT Abstract: We will describe appearances of the algebraic phenomena of Koszul duality in the context of boundary conditions and defects in quantum field theory. Primarily motivated by topological string theory, this point of view was pioneered by Costello and Li in their proposal for a […]

Quasi-Local Mass in a Binary Black Hole Merger

Virtual

https://youtu.be/cboxkchYFUk General Relativity Seminar Speaker: Daniel Kolb (Max Planck Institute) Title: Quasi-Local Mass in a Binary Black Hole Merger Abstract: One of the major open problems in classical general relativity is how one should define the mass of a finite region of space. In this talk, we will investigate a promising definition proposed by Wang and […]

A bulk gap in the presence of edge states for a truncated Haldane pseudopotential

Virtual

https://youtu.be/QGVYBN7vBT8 Topological Quantum Matter Seminar Speaker: Amanda Young, UIUC Title: A bulk gap in the presence of edge states for a truncated Haldane pseudopotential Abstract: Haldane pseudopotentials were first introduced as Hamiltonian models for the fractional quantum Hall effect, and it has been long expected that they should exhibit the characteristic properties of this exotic […]

On the Power of Forward pass through Transformer Architectures

CMSA Room G10 CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

https://youtu.be/JYt-ldZ3DqM New Technologies in Mathematics Seminar Speaker: Abhishek Panigrahi, Dept. of Computer Science, Princeton University Title: On the Power of Forward pass through Transformer Architectures Abstract: Highly trained transformers are capable of interesting computations as they infer for an input. The exact mechanism that these models use during forward passes is an interesting area of […]

Thresholds

CMSA Room G10 CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

Probability Seminar Speaker: Jinyoung Park (NYU) Title: Thresholds Abstract: For a finite set X, a family F of subsets of X is said to be increasing if any set A that contains B in F is also in F. The p-biased product measure of F increases as p increases from 0 to 1, and often […]

A quasi-local mass in general relativity

CMSA Room G10 CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

Member Seminar Speaker: Aghil Alaee Title: A quasi-local mass in general relativity Abstract: One of the fundamental open problems in geometric analysis and mathematical relativity is constructing a (universal) energy/mass quantity to compute the energy/mass of a finite region of spacetime, which can include a star, black hole, or galaxy. We define a new gauge-independent quasi-local mass […]