Seminars and Colloquia by Series

Amoebas, Nonnegative Polynomials and Sums of Squares Supported on Circuits

Series
Algebra Seminar
Time
Monday, October 5, 2015 - 15:05 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Timo de Wolff – Texas A&M University
Deciding nonnegativity of real polynomials is a key question in real algebraic geometry with crucial importance in polynomial optimization. Since this problem is NP-hard, one is interested in finding sufficient conditions (certificates) for nonnegativity, which are easier to check. The standard certificates are sums of squares (SOS), which trace back to Hilbert (see Hilbert’s 17th problem). In this talk we completely characterize sections of the cones of nonnegative polynomials and sums of squares with polynomials supported on circuits, a genuine class of sparse polynomials. In particular, nonnegativity is characterized by an invariant, which can be immediately derived from the initial polynomial. Based on these results, we obtain a completely new class of nonnegativity certificates independent from SOS certificates. Furthermore, nonnegativity of such circuit polynomials f coincides with solidness of the amoeba of f , i.e., the Log-absolute-value image of the algebraic variety V(f) in C^n of f. These results establish a first direct connection between amoeba theory and nonnegativity of polynomials. These results generalize earlier works by Fidalgo, Ghasemi, Kovacec, Marshall and Reznick. The talk is based on joint work with Sadik Iliman.

Tropical Homotopy Continuation

Series
Algebra Seminar
Time
Monday, September 28, 2015 - 15:05 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Anders Jensen – Aarhus University, Denmark
In numerical algebraic geometry the key idea is to solve systems of polynomial equations via homotopy continuation. By this is meant, that the solutions of a system are tracked as the coefficients change continuously toward the system of interest. We study the tropicalisation of this process. Namely, we combinatorially keep track of the solutions of a tropical polynomial system as its coefficients change. Tropicalising the entire regeneration process of numerical algebraic geometry, we obtain a combinatorial algorithm for finding all tropical solutions. In particular, we obtain the mixed cells of the system in a mixed volume computation. Experiments suggest that the method is not only competitive but also asymptotically performs better than conventional methods for mixed cell enumeration. The method shares many of the properties of a recent tropical method proposed by Malajovich. However, using symbolic perturbations, reverse search and exact arithmetic our method becomes reliable, memory-less and well-suited for parallelisation.

Duality in Convex Algebraic Geometry

Series
Algebra Seminar
Time
Monday, September 21, 2015 - 15:05 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Rainer Sinn – Georgia Tech
Duality is an important feature in convexity and in projective algebraic geometry. We will discuss the interplay of these two dualities for the cone of sums of squares of ternary forms and its dual cone, the Hankel spectrahedron.

Deformation theory and cup products

Series
Algebra Seminar
Time
Monday, September 14, 2015 - 15:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Carl Wang Erickson – Brandeis University
We will introduce, through examples, the philosophy of Delignethat "in characteristic zero, a deformation problem is controlled by adifferential graded (or "dg-") Lie algebra." Focusing on the deformationtheory of representations of a group, we will give an extension of thisphilosophy to positive characteristic. This will be justified by thepresence of a dg-algebra controlling the deformations, and the fact thatthe cohomology of the dg-algebra has an A-infinity algebra structureexplicitly presenting the deformation problem. This structure can bethought of as "higher cup products" on group cohomology, extending theusual cup product and often computable as Massey products. We will writedown concrete, representation-theoretic questions that are answered bythese higher cup products. To conclude, we will show that the cup productstructure on Galois cohomology, which is the subject of e.g. the motivicBloch-Kato conjecture and its proofs, is enriched by these higher cupproducts, and that this enrichment reflects properties of the Galois group.Familiarity with dg-algebras and infinity-algebras will not be presumed.

Symmetric powers and the étale Dold-Thom theorem

Series
Algebra Seminar
Time
Monday, August 31, 2015 - 15:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Arnav Tripathy – Stanford University
After reminding everyone why the symmetric powers Sym^n X of a scheme arise and are interesting from the point of view of the Weil conjectures, I'll recall the Dold-Thom theorem of algebraic topology, which governs the behavior of symmetric powers of a topological space. I'll then explain how the notion of étale homotopy allows us to compare these two realms of arithmetic geometry and algebraic topology, providing a homotopical refinement of a small part of the Weil conjectures.

Reciprocal linear spaces and their Chow forms

Series
Algebra Seminar
Time
Friday, April 10, 2015 - 15:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Cynthia Vinzant – North Carolina State
A reciprocal linear space is the image of a linear space under coordinate-wise inversion. This nice algebraic variety appears in many contexts and its structure is governed by the combinatorics of the underlying hyperplane arrangement. A reciprocal linear space is also an example of a hyperbolic variety, meaning that there is a family of linear spaces all of whose intersections with it are real. This special real structure is witnessed by a determinantal representation of its Chow form in the Grassmannian. In this talk, I will introduce reciprocal linear spaces and discuss the relation of their algebraic properties to their combinatorial and real structure.

Cellular Binomial Ideals

Series
Algebra Seminar
Time
Friday, April 3, 2015 - 15:05 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Laura Felicia Matusevich – Texas A&M
Primary decomposition is a fundamental operation in commutative algebra. Although there are several algorithms to perform it, this remains a very difficult undertaking in general. In cases with additional combinatorial structure, it may be possible to do primary decomposition "by hand". The goal of this talk is to explain in detail one such example. This is joint work with Zekiye Eser; no prerequisites are assumed beyond knowing the definitions of "polynomial ring" and "ideal".

Concrete Chern classes, the cyclic quantum dilogarithm and the Bloch group

Series
Algebra Seminar
Time
Wednesday, April 1, 2015 - 15:05 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Stavros Garoufalidis – Gatech –
The talk involves an explicit formula for the Chern class on K_3(F), F=number field, givenin terms of the cyclic quantum dilogarithm on the Bloch group of F. Such a formula constructsexcplicitly units in number fields, given a complete hyperbolic 3-manifold, and a complex root ofunity, and those units fit in the asymptotic expansion of quantum knot invariants. The existence ofsuch a formula was conjectured 4 years ago by Zagier (and abstractly follows from Voevodsky's work),and the final solution to the problem was given in recent joint work of the speaker with FrankCalegari and Don Zagier. The key ingredient to the concrete formula is a special function, thecyclic quantum dilogarithm, from a physics 1993 paper of Kashaev and others. The connection of thisformula with physics, and with the Quantum Modular Form Conjecture of Zagier continues with jointwork with Tudor Dimofte. But this is the topic of another talk.

Sparse sum-of-squares certificates on finite abelian groups

Series
Algebra Seminar
Time
Monday, March 30, 2015 - 15:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Hamza Fawzi – MIT
We consider functions on finite abelian groups that are nonnegative and also sparse in the Fourier basis. We investigate conditions under which such functions admit sparse sum-of-certificates certificates of nonnegativity, i.e., certificates where the functions in the sum of squares decomposition have a small common sparsity pattern. Our conditions are purely combinatorial in nature, and are based on finding particularly nice chordal covers of a certain Cayley graph. These techniques allow us to show that any nonnegative quadratic function in binary variables is a sum of squares of functions of degree at mostceil(n/2), resolving a conjecture of Laurent. After discussing the connection with semidefinite programming lifts of polytopes, we also see how our techniques provide an example of separation between sizes ofsemidefinite programming lifts and linear programming lifts. This is joint work with James Saunderson and Pablo Parrilo.

Pages