University of Georgia
Department of Mathematics

Seminar Schedule
October 13 - October 17, 2003

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

MONDAY, October 13, 2003

Numerical Analysis
1:30p.m., Room 524
Speaker: Ming-Jun Lai, University of Georgia
Title of talk: Domain decomposition method for scattered data fitting/interpolation.

Geometry
1:30p.m., Room 410
No Meeting this week

Topology
2:30p.m., Room 322*
*Please note room change.
Speaker: Gordana Matic, University of Georgia
Title of talk: Contact structures and fibered links in 3-manifolds, continued


VIGRE - Algebra Seminar
2:30p.m., Room 410
Speaker: Brian Boe, University of Georgia
Title of talk: Nilpotent varieties for the adjoint representation of classical groups in characteristic zero.

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

Lie Theory
3:30p.m., Room 303
Speaker: TBA
Title of talk: TBA

TUESDAY, October 14, 2003

VIGRE Graduate Student Seminar
2:00-3:15pm, Room 304
Speaker:Valery Alexeev, University of Georgia
Title of talk: Higher-dimensional analogs of stable curves
Abstract: Stable curves were introduced by Deligne and Mumford in 1969 and since then proved to be enormously useful, with applications ranging from Gromov-Witten invariants in physics to alterations of singularities in positive characteristic in algebraic geometry. I am going to speak about some higher dimensional analogs of stable curves. This is going to be a study in the eternal struggle: high-brow mathematics (moduli spaces, semiabelian varieties, Grothendieck's SGAs...) versus the low-brow, very explicit and seemingly elementary combinatorics of graphs, polytopes and their triangulations, hyperplanes arrangements and
such. Research problems abound at any level in between.

Analysis
3:30p.m., Room 326
Speaker: TBA
Title of talk: TBA

WEDNESDAY, October 15, 2003

Group Representation & Cohomology
2:30p.m., Room 410
Speaker: Dave Benson, University of Georgia
Title of talk: Stable and derived categories of modules, continued

Algebraic Geometry
2:30pm, Room 303
Speaker: Valery Alexeev, University of Georgia
Title of talk: "Toric Torelli map"
Abstract. We show that Kapranov's compactifications of configuration spaces and Lafforgue's compactifications of thin Schubert cells (used in a proof of Langlads program) could be both understood as applications of a toric analog of the classical Torelli map, which associates to a curve its Jacobian.

Faculty and Graduate Social
3:00pm, Room 409
Coffee, Cookies, Tea

Number Theory/Arithmetic Geometry
3:45- 4:45pm*, Room 304
*Please note change in time
Speaker: Charles Pooh, University of Georgia
Title of talk: An effective version of Fekete-Szego theorem
Abstract: I will give an effective version of Fekete-Szego theorem on compact sets. Namely, we will show that for a compact connected set E of capacity greater or equal to 1, each \epsilon-neighborhood of E contains a level curve P(x) = 1 where P(x) = x^d + a_{1}x^{d-1} + ... + a_{d} is an integer polynomial and where d and the coefficients \abs [a_{i}} are bounded explicitly in terms of \epsilon and the capacity of E.

THURSDAY, October 16, 2003

VIGRE - Contact Topology
9:00a.m., Room 326

VIGRE Quantum Mechanics Seminar
2:00p.m., Room 303
Speakers: Cal Burgoyne and Jerry Hower, University of Georgia
Title of talk: A demonstration with polarized light, calculations with 2-state systems, and motivation for the Pauli matrices

Student Number Theory
3:30p.m., Room 326
Speaker: Peter Petrov, University of Georgia
Title of talk: Introducing motives
Abstract: The notion of motive was introduced by A. Grothendieck and is the most valuable one for himself (together with the notions of scheme and topos). It is related with many fundamental areas in algebraic and arithmetic geometry, and algebraic topology. One could ask what does it mean something to be "motivic"? There is a lack of introductory texts, appropriate for graduate students with very basic knowledge, such as varieties, morphisms, divisors, basic homology and cohomology. In this talk some motivation will be given together with some basic notions and facts. Although the geometry will be in the focus, some important relations in arithmetic will be shortly presented (e.g. between jacobians and 1-motives).

FRIDAY, October 17, 2003

CATS
1:25p.m., Room 306
No Meeting this week

Wavelet Analysis
2:30p.m., Room 524
Speaker: Alex Petukhov, University of Georgia
Title of talk: Code strategies: Arithmetic and Huffman codes