Graduate Student Advisory Committee (GSAC) Colloquium Schedule:


Graduate Colloquium
Spring 2014
Tuesdays, 4:35 - 5:35 PM, JWB 335
Math 6960-001
(credit hours available!)

GSAC Home | Past Graduate Colloquia

The goal of this Colloquium is to encourage interaction among graduate students, specifically between graduate students who are actively researching a problem and those who have not yet started their research. Speakers will discuss their research or a related introductory topic on a level which should be accessible to nonspecialists. The discussions will be geared toward graduate students in the beginning of their program, but all are invited to attend. This invitation explicitly includes undergraduate students.



August

January 21

Speaker: Nick Cahill

Groups and Trees


Abstract: Finding an action of a group on a particularly nice object can yield a wealth of information about its structure. Graphs are particularly easy to grasp, and trees are exceptionally nice among graphs. We will discuss a handful of surprisingly powerful structure theorems can be obtained once we know that a group acts on a tree, and give an example proof of a known result in number theory using one of these theorems.

January 28

Speaker: Adam Brown

Applications of Representation Theory in Harmonic Analysis


Abstract: Representation theory studies the structure of groups by transcribing questions in group theory to the context of linear algebra. We will begin with a specific application of this technique to the study of periodic functions, which will yield a foundation for Fourier analysis. Then we will generalize our example, which will give us a powerful tool in the study of harmonic analysis. This approach reveals an interesting connection between two important and seemingly unrelated areas in pure and applied mathematics.

February 18

Speaker: Anna Macquarie

Representation Theory and the Hydrogen Atom


Abstract: A major accomplishment of representation theory has been its predictive power in quantum physics. In this talk, we will discuss a fundamental example of this powerful connection: using representation theory to describe the structure of the hydrogen atom. Using only some basic tools from representation theory applied to the underlying symmetry group of our hydrogen system, we can extract large amounts of information about the intricate structure of the four quantum numbers describing a given state of the hydrogen atom.

February 25

Speaker: Derrick Wigglesworth

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March 4

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March 18

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March 25

Speaker:Kelly MacArthur

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April 1

Speaker: Sarah Cobb

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April 8

Speaker: Jenna Noll

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April 15

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