## Seminars and Colloquia by Series

Friday, February 25, 2011 - 13:05 , Location: Skiles 006 , , University of South Carolina , , Organizer: Stavros Garoufalidis
We begin this talk by discussing four different problems that arenumber theoretic or combinatorial in nature.  Two of these problems remainopen and the other two have known solutions.  We then explain how these seeminglyunrelated problems are connected to each other.  To disclose a little more information,one of the problems with a known solution is the following:  Is it possible to find anirrational number $q$ such that the infinite geometric sequence $1, q, q^{2}, \dots$has 4 terms in arithmetic progression?
Monday, February 14, 2011 - 15:00 , Location: Skiles 005 , Matt Baker , Georgia Tech , Organizer: Matt Baker
I will discuss some recent results, obtained jointly with Sam Payne and Joe Rabinoff, on tropicalizations of elliptic curves.
Monday, November 15, 2010 - 10:00 , Location: Skiles 255 , Uli Walther , Purdue University , Organizer: Anton Leykin
I will discuss D-module type invariants on hyperplane arrangements and their relation to the intersection lattice (when known).
Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - 14:00 , Location: D.M. Smith Room 015 , , University of California, Berkeley , Organizer: Anton Leykin
A smooth quartic curve in the projective plane has 36 representations as a symmetric determinant of linear forms and 63 representations as a sum of three squares. We report on joint work with Daniel Plaumann and Cynthia Vinzant regarding the explicit computation of these objects. This lecture offers a gentle introduction to the 19th century theory of plane quartics from the current perspective of convex algebraic geometry.
Friday, June 18, 2010 - 15:05 , Location: Skiles 171 , Christoph Koutschan , RISC Austria , , Organizer: Stavros Garoufalidis
In this talk we recall some modular techniques (chinese remaindering,rational reconstruction, etc.) that play a crucial role in manycomputer algebra applications, e.g., for solving linear systems over arational function field, for evaluating determinants symbolically,or for obtaining results by ansatz ("guessing"). We then discuss howmuch our recent achievements in the areas of symbolic summation andintegration and combinatorics benefited from these techniques.
Monday, May 3, 2010 - 14:00 , Location: Skiles 171 , Pavlos Tzermias , University of Tennessee Knoxville , Organizer: Matt Baker
The polynomials mentioned in the title were introduced by Cauchy and Liouville in 1839 in connection with early attempts at a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. They were subsequently studied by Mirimanoff who in 1903 conjectured their irreducibility over the rationals. During the past fifteen years it has become clear that Mirimanoff's conjecture is closely related to properties of certain special functions and to some deep results in diophantine approximation. Apparently, there is also a striking connection to hierarchies of certain evolution equations (which this speaker is not qualified to address). We will present and discuss a number of recent results on this problem.
Monday, April 26, 2010 - 14:00 , Location: Skiles 171 , Paolo Aluffi , Florida State University , , Organizer: Stavros Garoufalidis
We generalize a construction of Ashoke Sen of weak couplinglimits' for certain types of elliptic fibrations. Physics argumentsinvolving tadpole anomaly cancellations lead to conjectural identitiesof Euler characteristics. We generalize these identities to identitiesof Chern classes, which we are able to verify mathematically inseveral instances. For this purpose we propose a generalization of theso-called Sethi-Vafa-Witten identity'. We also obtain a typeclassification of configurations of smooth branes satisfying thetadpole condition. This is joint work with Mboyo Esole (Harvard).
Monday, April 12, 2010 - 15:00 , Location: Skiles 255 , Ricardo Conceicao , Oxford College of Emory University , , Organizer:
We will explicitly construct twists of elliptic curves with an arbitrarily large set of integral points over $\mathbb{F}_q(t)$.  As a motivation to our main result, we will discuss a conjecture of Vojta-Lang concerning the behavior of integral points on varieties of log-general type over number fields and present a natural translation to the function field setting. We will use our construction to provide an isotrivial counter-example to this conjecture.  We will also show that our main result also provides examples of elliptic curves with arbitrarily large set of independent points and of function fields with large $m$-class rank.
Monday, April 5, 2010 - 14:00 , Location: Skiles 171 , Frank Sottile , Texas A&M , Organizer: Anton Leykin
An orbitope is the convex hull of an orbit of a compact group acting linearly on a vector space.  Instances of these highly symmetric convex bodies have appeared in many areas of mathematics and its applications, including protein reconstruction, symplectic geometry, and calibrations in differential geometry.In this talk, I will discuss Orbitopes from the perpectives of classical convexity, algebraic geometry, and optimization with an emphasis on motivating questions and concrete examples. This is joint work with Raman Sanyal and Bernd Sturmfels.
Monday, March 29, 2010 - 14:00 , Location: Skiles 171 , Patrick Corn , Emory University , Organizer: Matt Baker
We will outline some open questions about rational points on varieties, and present the results of some computations on explicit genus-2 K3 surfaces. For example, we'll show that there are no rational numbers w,x,y,z (not all 0) satisfying the equation w^2 + 4x^6 = 2(y^6 + 343z^6).