Notiziario Scientifico

Settimana dal 13 al 19 gennaio 2014


Lunedì 13 gennaio 2014
Ore 14:30, Aula di Consiglio
Seminario di Analisi Matematica
Gianluca Crippa (Università di Basilea)
Ordinary differential equations and singular integrals
Given a Lipschitz vector field, the classical Cauchy-Lipschitz theory gives existence, uniqueness and regularity of the associated ODE flow. In recent years, much attention has been devoted to extensions of such theory to cases in which the vector field is less regular than Lipschitz, but still belongs to some "weak differentiability classes". In this talk, I will review the main points of an approach involving quantitative estimates for flows of Sobolev vector fields (joint work with Camillo De Lellis) and describe further extensions to a case involving singular integrals of L^1 functions (joint work with Francois Bouchut) and to a case endowed with a "split structure" (joint work with Anna Bohun and Francois Bouchut).


Martedì 14 gennaio 2014
Ore 10:30, Aula 34 (quarto piano), Dipartimento di Scienze Statistiche
Elena Karachanskaya (Pacific National University, Khabarovsk)
The invariant method in the theory of stochastic differential equations and its applications for the control program problems
We consider two types of invariants (geometric and integral), which are connected with the theory of stochastic differential equations (SDEs). The geometric invariants are the fixed length of a random chain and the constant radius of a sphere, which is the surface for random walks (for example, in the case of a turning diffusion). The integral invariants are represented as integrals of kernel functions of integral invariants on the whole space. These kernel functions are solutions of SDEs, which were obtained and discussed. Furthermore, kernel functions will be used for deriving the first global stochastic integral, for constructing the program control (with probability one) for stochastic dynamical systems on deterministic manifold based on Brownian motion with Poisson jumps, and for obtaining the Kolmogorov equations.


Martedì 14 gennaio 2014
Ore 14:10, Aula B
Paul Chleboun (Università di Warwick)
Large deviations and metastability in a size-dependent zero-range process
We discuss a general approach to understand phase separation and metastability in stochastic particle systems that exhibit a condensation transition. Condensation occurs when, above some critical density, a finite fraction of all the particles in the system accumulate on a single lattice site. We present a detailed analysis of a particular size-dependent zero-range process which was introduced as a toy model for clustering in granular media. This model also captures all the relevant details of more generic condensing zero-range processes close to the critical point. Results on the equivalence of ensembles and metastability are based on large deviation principles for the maximum of triangular arrays of independent random variables conditioned on their sum. We derive the saddle point structure of the associated free energy landscape, which implies different mechanisms for the dynamics of the condensate depending on the system parameters. These results lead us to an interesting conjecture on the stationary dynamics of the condensate in the thermodynamic limit.


Martedì 14 gennaio 2014
Ore 14:15, Aula Dal Passo, Università di Roma II
Seminario di Equazioni Differenziali
Andrea Mondino (ETH, Zurigo)
Willmore spheres in Riemannian manifolds
Given an immersion f of the 2-sphere in a Riemannian manifold (M,g) we study quadratic curvature functionals depending on the mean curvature, the second fundamental form, and the tracefree second fundamental form. Minimizers, and more generally critical points of such functionals can be seen respectively as generalized minimal, totally geodesic and totally umbilical immersions. In the seminar I will review some results (obtained in collaboration with Kuwert, Riviere and Shygulla) regarding the existence and the regularity of minimizers of such functionals. An interesting observation regarding the results obtained with Riviere is that the theory of Willmore surfaces can be usesful to complete the theory of minimal surfaces (in particular in relation to the existence of canonical smooth representatives in homotopy classes, a classical program started by Sacks and Uhlenbeck).


Martedì 14 gennaio 2014
Ore 15:00, Aula di Consiglio
Seminario di Modellistica differenziale numerica
Alessandro Lanza (Università di Bologna)
Image restoration with constraints on noise-whiteness
Image restoration refers to the recovery of a clean sharp image from a noisy, and potentially blurred, observation. Based on the assumption that noise is additive and white, we propose a novel variational framework in order to enforce whiteness of the residue image. In particular, the proposed variational model uses Total Variation (TV) regularization (chosen simply for its popularity, any other regularizers could be substituted as well) and imposes the resemblance of the residue image to a white noise realization by constraining its autocorrelation function. The whiteness constraint constitutes the key novelty behind our approach. The restored image is efficiently computed by the constrained minimization of an energy functional using an Alternating Directions Methods of Multipliers (ADMM) procedure. Numerical examples show that the novel residue constraint indeed improves the quality of the computed restorations.


Martedì 14 gennaio 2014
Ore 16:00, Aula di Consiglio
Seminario di Modellistica differenziale numerica
Chiara Simeoni (Università di Nizza)
Remarks on the consistency of Upwind Source at Interface schemes on nonuniform grids
The recent years have seen a significant development in the use of nonuniform grids for the numerical solution of partial differential equations. This development has given rise to a number of new problems regarding the analysis of such methods: firstly, on nonuniform grids, many formally inconsistent schemes converge. We shall report on a numerical study of the properties of supra-convergence for hyperbolic conservation laws with geometrical source terms, which has confirmed that the standard consistency condition for the numerical fluxes do not guarantee that the (local) truncation error vanishes in presence of nonuniform meshes. Nevertheless, the main issue of an error analysis with optimal rates can be pursued, by virtue of the results obtained on the supra-convergence phenomenon for numerical approximation of hyperbolic conservation laws. More clearly, despite the fact that a deterioration of the point-wise consistency is observed in consequence of the non-uniformity of the mesh, the formal accuracy of the methods is actually maintained as the global error behaves better than the truncation error would indicate. This property of enhancement of the numerical error has been widely explored for homogeneous problems, and we attempt at extending such theory to conservation laws with geometrical source terms that are discretized by means of well-balanced schemes, as suggested by the classical application to the Saint-Venant equations for shallow waters. It is worth remarking that the results announced above cannot affect the case of ordinary differential equation with parameter-dependent (geometrical) source terms, namely for systems with negligible fluxes. In effects, elementary counter-examples show that (strong) convergence fails for nonuniform grids, and then some specific approach has to be designed for recovering the error analysis for finite volume schemes on nonuniform meshes. Precise comments on the limits and potentiality of these approaches will be done.


Mercoledì 15 gennaio 2014
Ore 14:30, Aula di Consiglio
Lewis Topley
Presentations and representations of finite W-algebras
Since they were first defined in the early 20th century, Lie algebras have found their place at the very core of abstract algebra and theoretical physics. Their representation theory was developed rapidly and is still an area of vibrant interdisciplinary research today - combining algebraic techniques with those of geometry, combinatorics and category theory. The themes which arose in this theory have been replicated successfully for many other algebras and so this body of work may be seen as a guiding paradigm in representation theory. In the late 1970's some glimpses began to appear of deep relationships between the representations of Lie algebras and nilpotent orbits. These were mostly understood by a variety of sophisticated methods although, at first, there were very few unifying themes. In 2002, Alexander Premet defined what is now known as the finite W-algebra. This is an associative, filtered algebra attached to a complex semisimple Lie algebra and a nilpotent orbit therein. It has since become clear that the representation theory of these algebras may explain many of the aforementioned connections between representations and nilpotent orbits of Lie algebras. As a result, some of the most challenging questions in the representation theory of Lie algebras are now being answered. I intend to contribute to the theory by initiating two parallel investigations. The second of these depends upon the first. In type A, the finite W-algebras may be described by generators and relations, thanks to the work of Brundan and Kleshchev. Finding such a presentation in other types is perhaps the most fundamental and pressing problem for theorists in this area. I have conceived of a method to obtain such a presentation, making use of the (geometric) theory of sheets of adjoint orbits. My second investigation shall reduce this presentation to the characteristic p realm in order to study the modular representations of Lie algebras.


Giovedì 16 gennaio 2014
Ore 14:00, Aula di Consiglio
Seminario P(n): Problemi differenziali non lineari
David Ruiz (Università di Granada)
Standing waves for a gauged nonlinear Schroedinger equation: a variational analysis
This paper is motivated by a gauged Schroedinger equation in dimension 2 including the so-called Chern-Simons term. At low energies, the Maxwell term can be dropped, giving rise to a problem proposed by Jackiw and Pi in 1990. The study of radially symmetric standig waves leads to a nonlinear stationary Schroedinger equation involving a nonlocal term. This problem is the Euler-Lagrange equation of a certain energy functional. In this talk we will be concerned with the global behavior of such functional. This is joint work with Alessio Pomponio (Politecnico di Bari, Italy).


Venerdì 17 gennaio 2014
Ore 11:00, Aula 34 (quarto piano), Dipartimento di Scienze Statistiche
Alessio Farcomeni (Università di Roma I)
Generalized linear mixed models based on latent Markov heterogeneity structures
Latent Markov models (LM) can be seen as a flexible device for taking into account time-varying subject-specific unobserved heterogeneity. In the basic LM, a random intercept is flexibly allowed to evolve over time. The available formulations of mixed LM often assume that any additional random effect is time-constant, with few specific exceptions. In this work we formulate a mixed latent Markov model in which all random effects may freely evolve over time. The size of the parameter space is controlled with the possibilities of assuming block independence of random effects, and/or that groups of random effects may share some or all aspects of their distribution. Parameter estimation is carried out with a simple expectation maximization strategy, analogous to that used for the basic latent Markov model, after an adaptation of the usual forward backward recursions and a parsimonious representation of the expected complete likelihood. Standard errors are derived using Oakes' identity. Dependence among random effects is summarized using Watanabès total correlation and described with log-odds ratios and higher-order log-linear interactions. We illustrate with an original application to the relationship between health literacy and depression in a panel of adolescents. In this example subjects are clustered in schools, which leads to high-dimensional multivariate time-varying random effects.


Venerdì 17 gennaio 2014
Ore 14:30, Aula 211, Università di Roma III
Seminario di Geometria
Chango Keem (Seoul National University)
On Weiestrass points on curves of low genus
On an algebraic curve of genus more than one, there are so-called Weierstrass points which are rather distinguished points on the given curve. After reviewing some basic notions and several known results in the Weierstrass point business, we will focus on curves of low genus, say g = 3,4,5. Especially we are particularly interested in those curves with Weierstrass points of maximal possible weights.


Tutte le informazioni relative a questo notiziario devono pervenire all'indirizzo di posta elettronica seminari@mat.uniroma1.it, o nella casella della posta di Luigi Orsina, entro le ore 9 del venerdì precedente la settimana di pubblicazione.

Tutti coloro che desiderano ricevere questo notiziario via e-mail sono invitati a comunicare il proprio indirizzo di posta elettronica a seminari@mat.uniroma1.it.

                Il Direttore

Il calendario dei seminari è anche disponibile su internet.

© Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza" - Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Roma