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Joint Dynamics and PDE Seminar

The Boston University Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Brown University's Department of Mathematics and Division of Applied Mathematics, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Mathematics and Statistics hold joint seminars on topics in dynamics and PDE. The schedule and locations for these events can be found below. For a list of all past events of the seminar please visit the BU/Brown/UMass PDE Seminar Archive.

The Brown/BU/UMass Seminars are currently organized by

The next seminar will take place at Brown University on November 18th 2022 (Friday). You may find more information in the program below.

Related Files
application/pdf iconFall 2022 Program (PDF)
application/pdf iconSpring 2022 Program (PDF)
application/pdf iconFall 2021 Program (PDF)
application/pdf iconSpring 2019 Program (PDF)
application/pdf iconFall 2018 Program (PDF)
application/pdf iconSpring 2018 Program (PDF)
application/pdf iconFall 2017 Program (PDF)
application/pdf iconSpring 2017 Program (PDF)
application/pdf iconFall 2016 Program (PDF)
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application/pdf iconFall 2015 Program (PDF)

Fall 2022

Friday, November 18 1:00pm - 5:00pm at Brown

General-relativistic hydrogen and hydrogenic ions
Ebru Toprak (Yale University)

In this talk, I will speak how the static non-linear electromagnetic-vacuum spacetime of a point nucleus with negative bare mass affects the self-adjointness of the general relativistic Dirac Hamiltonian for a test electron, without and with an anomalous magnetic moment.

Snaking of contact defects in the Brusselator
Tim Roberts (Brown University)

The Brusselator is one of the oldest systems studied in spatial dynamics, first conceived as a result of Turing's landmark work on the formation of stripe patterns in the 1960's. Despite the decades and myriad studies since then, it remains a system of interest due to its ability to display a zoo of different complex behaviors. In this work we look at a newly discovered behavior, snaking of contact defects. Numerical studies by Tzou et al.

Stochastic collective behaviors in large neural networks
Jonathan Touboul (Brandeis University)

Abstract: TBD

Spectral stability via the Maslov index and validated numerics
Hannah Pieper (Boston University)

Results from Sturm-Liouville theory tell us that the number of unstable eigenvalues of a scalar, second order linear operator coincides with the number of zeros of the eigenfunction associated to the zero eigenvalue. Recently, these results have been extended to a more general setting using the Maslov index, which allows for the spectral stability of nonlinear waves to be determined by counting so-called conjugate points.

The perils of political centrism
Natasa Dragovic (Tufts University)

In this talk I will present a model of two competing political candidates who shift views opportunistically to maximize their share of the vote. We start with some observations about the model. First, the best strategy for a candidate is often to move towards the other candidate, eventually resulting in two centrists with coalescing views. Second, this strategy ceases to be optimal as soon as sufficiently many voters respond to their candidate’s opportunistic drift towards the center by staying away from the polls altogether.

Riemannian interpretation of stochastic eigenvalue processes
Ching-Peng Huang (Brown University)

We show that the classical result of Dyson Brownian motion is a consequence of Riemannian submersion and systematically prove the same for other two eigenvalue processes, where the repulsive deterministic terms come from mean curvature flows as a gradient flow maximizing the volume of group orbits. The result is valid for the classical ensembles as well as general $\beta$-ensembles first realized in matrix models by Dimitriu and Edelman.

View past seminars