Events - 2017

Ákos Nagy, University of Waterloo and The Fields Institute

"Vortex-like instantons on the Euclidean Schwarzschild manifold"

Jitendra Prakash, Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo

"Bell's Theorem"

Bell's theorem is one of the celebrated cornerstones in physics, being described as "the most profound discovery of science". In this talk we shall discuss this theorem from a mathematical perspective, and as an example we shall derive the CHSH inequality. We shall also see what more general questions this theorem raises. Knowledge of physics is not required, however some basic linear algebra will be used.

MC 5501

Nickolas Rollick, Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo

"Definitions are relative"

Having spent the last two weeks on algebraic preliminaries, we now take a sharp right turn to explore the scenic route to our destination.  Specifically, we will see how to "relativize" the notions of quasicompactness and quasiseparatedness, to make them properties of morphisms rather than properties of schemes.  Along the way, we verify as much as possible that these classes of morphisms are good ones in the sense of Vakil.

MC 5413

Xinliang An, University of Toronto

"On Singularity Formation in General Relativity"

Mehdi Karimi, Department of Combinatorics & Optimization, University of Waterloo

"Sum-of-Squares Proofs in Optimization"

The old concept of sum-of-squares found its way into optimization and even machine learning. I will talk about this quickly evolving research area known as convex algebraic geometry.

MC 5501

Michael Deveau, Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo

"Isomorphisms that cannot be coded by computable relations -- Part 2"

Last time, we saw why it is so useful to code an isomorphism by the image of a computable relation and also explored some cases where this is always possible. We now turn to constructing a pair of structures where this is not possible. That is, we construct two structures -- isomorphic to $(\omega, <)$ -- where this method of establishing the degree of the isomorphism between them will not work.

MC 5413

Alexei Oblomkov, University of Massachusetts

"Planar curve singularities, knot invariants and representation theory"

Eric Woolgar, University of Alberta

"Curvature-dimension conditions in relativity and Lorentzian geometry"

Farzad Aryan, McGill University

"On an extension of the Landau-Gonek formula"

Christopher Hawthorne, Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo

"Qualitative probability theory and types, part 2"

We continue Tao's blog post; we define random variables, and we examine qualitative probability measures on definable sets. Time permitting, we study random variables on groups and the group chunk theorem.

MC 5403

Kevin Costello, Perimeter Institute

"An introduction to the AdS/CFT correspondence for mathematicians"

Yoav Len, Department of Combinatorics & Optimization, University of Waterloo

"Tangent lines and the equation 28=7 x 4"