University of Georgia
Department of Mathematics

Seminar Schedule
September 3 - September 7, 2007

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

MONDAY, September 3, 2007

University Holiday - no seminars scheduled



TUESDAY, September 4, 2007

VIGRE - Graduate Student Seminar
2:00pm, Room 304
Speaker: Will Kazez, University of Georgia
Title of talk: Contact Topology
Abstract: The keywords for this talk are: families of 2-planes in 3-space, integrable vs. non-integrable distributions, singular foliations on surfaces, ODE's, knot theory, DLP television, and for good luck, fluid flows.  Hopefully this end up serving as a sort of coherent introduction to contact topology.

WEDNESDAY, September 5, 2007

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

Algebraic Geometry
3:30pm, Room 410
Speaker: Maxim Arap, University of Georgia
Title of talk:
Deformations of smooth schemes
Abstract: 
This report will be based on some of the lectures on deformation
theory and moduli in algebraic geometry that I attended at MSRI this
summer. After some general remarks on deformation theory, I will
introduce the dual numbers associated to a ring R and an R-module M.
Using these dual numbers as infinitesimal thickenings, I shall try to
present a study of infinitesimal deformations of a smooth scheme over
a ring.

Arithmetic Geometry/Number Theory
3:30pm, Room 304
Speaker: Matthew Smith, University of Georgia
Title of talk: On solution-free sets for simultaneous additive equations.
Abstract: In this talk I will use a combination of the classical Hardy-Littlewood circle method and the methods developed by Gowers in his recent proof of Szemeredi's Theorem on long arithmetic progressions to obtain a quantitative estimate for the upper density of a set containing no solutions to a translation and dilation invariant system of diagonal polynomials of degrees 1, 2,..., k.

Mathematical Physics
3:45pm, Room 302
Speaker: Cal Burgoyne, Emily Pritchett, and Robert Varley, University of Georgia
Title of talk: More on magnetism and the partition function, then the statistical mechanics of the ideal gas law



THURSDAY, September 6, 2007

VIGRE – Algebraic Geometry
3:30pm, Room 323

Applied Math
2:00pm, Room 302
Speaker: Qing Zhang, University of Georgia
Title of talk:Valuation of Stock Loans with Regime Switching
Abstract: This paper is concerned with stock loan valuation in which the underlying stock price is dictated by geometric Brownian motion with regime switching. The stock loan pricing is quite different from that for standard American options because the associated variational inequalities {may} have infinitely many solutions. In addition, the optimal stopping time equals infinity with positive probability. Variational inequalities are used to establish values of stock loans and reasonable values of critical parameters such as loan sizes, loan rates and service fees in terms of certain algebraic equations.

Numerical examples are included to illustrate the results.

VIGRE – Tropical Geometry
2:00pm, Room 304

VIGRE – Circle Packing
3:30pm, Room 222

VIGRE-Number Theory
2:30pm, Room 326


FRIDAY, September 7, 2007

VIGRE-Algebra
1:30pm, Room 302

Geometry
2:30pm, Room 410
Speaker: Jesse Ratzkin, University of Georgia
Title of talk:  Rigidiy and deformations of constant mean curvature surfaces
Abstract : We continue the previous discussion of local and infinitesimal rigidity of CMC surfaces with some details of the proof of our theorem.