Seminar Schedule
January 10 – 14, 2005

All Seminars are held in Boyd Graduate Studies Bldg. unless otherwise noted.

MONDAY, January 10, 2005

Algebra
2:30-3:30p.m., Room 410
Speaker: Michael Collins
Title of talk: "Bounds for finite linear groups, I."

Probability Theory
2:45-4:00pm, Room 222

Faculty and Graduate Social
3:00 p.m., Room 409
Coffee, Cookies, Tea

Lie Theory
3:30-4:30p.m., Room 303
No Meeting this week

Topology
3:30-4:30pm, Room 326
No Meeting this week

TUESDAY, January 11, 2005

VIGRE Graduate Student Seminar
2:00p.m., Room 304
No Meeting this week

WEDNESDAY, January 12, 2005

Spline Analysis
2:00pm-3:00pm, Room 322
Speaker: Victoria Baramidze
Title of talk: Spherical Spline Approximation
Abstract: This is a first of a sequence of talks on spherical spline approximation. We start witha radial projection which mapps spherical harmonic polynomials over a spherical triangle to planar triangles.

Algebraic Geometry
2:30-3:45 p.m., Room 410
Speaker: Olivier Debarre, the University of Strasbourg I in Strasbourg, France
Title of talk: On coverings of abelian varieties
Abstract: To any (ramified) covering between smooth connected projective algebraic varieties, one associates the vector bundle on the target variety defined as the dual of the kernel of the trace map. Lazarsfeld discovered that the ampleness of this vector bundle implies strong similarities between the geometry (and the topology) of the source and target. He proved this ampleness in case the target is a projective space. We will prove a similar result when the target is a simple abelian variety. The proof uses the theory of M regularity of sheaves on an abelian variety recently developed by Pareschi and Popa.
At least the first half hour of the talk will be introductory and aimed at graduate students.

VIGRE – Cardiac Physiology
2:30p.m., Room 640

Faculty and Graduate Social
3:00 p.m., Room 409
Coffee, Cookies, Tea

Number Theory
3:45-5:15pm, Room 304
Speaker: TBA
Title of talk: TBA

THURSDAY, January 13, 2005

VIGRE – Clifford Algebras
2:00p.m., Room 410
Organizational Meeting

VIGRE – Algebraic Geometry
2:00p.m., Room 304

Faculty and Graduate Social
3:00 p.m., Room 409
Coffee, Cookies, Tea

Colloquium
3:30p.m., Room 304
Speaker: Olivier Debarre from the University of Strasbourg I in Stratsbourg, France.
Title: Hyperbolicity of complex manifolds
Abstract: A compact Riemann surface C of genus at least 2 is hyperbolic in the
following senses: it carries a metric with constant negative curvature, any
holomorphic map from the complex plane to C is constant, and if C is defined
over a number field, C has finitely many points defined over that field.
For higher-dimensional complex compact varieties, each of these properties
has natural generalizations, giving rise to various notions of hyperbolicity
(metric, analytic, arithmetic, and algebraic). We will explain these notions
through examples, and examine how they are related.

FRIDAY, January 14, 2005

Student Arithmetic/Algebraic Geometry Seminar
12:20p.m., Room 410
Speaker: TBA
Title of talk: TBA

Geometry
2:30p.m., Room 323
Organizational Meeting

VIGRE – Algebra
2:30p.m., Room 410
Dave Benson will be reviewing our work from last semester on representations and corresponding varieties for the symmetric group $\Sigma_d$ in characteristic $p$, with particular emphasis on the case $d < p^2$.

Students who have not previously participated in VIGRE Algebra are welcome to attend.

Wavelet Analysis
03:30-04:30p.m., Room 322
Speaker: Ming-Jun Lai, University of Georgia
Title of talk: Factorization of Positive Laurent Polynomials in Multivariate Setting
Abstract: I will introduce some methods for factor multivariate Laurent polynomials into a sum of magnitude squares of polynomials. Then I will detail these methods in the weekly seminar.