 |
Fields Institute Colloquium/Seminar in Applied Mathematics
2009-2010
| Organizing Committee |
|
Jim Colliander (Toronto)
Walter Craig (McMaster)
Catherine Sulem (Toronto) |
Robert McCann (Toronto)
Adrian Nachman (Toronto)
Mary Pugh (Toronto)
|
The Fields Institute Colloquium/Seminar in Applied Mathematics
is a monthly colloquium series for mathematicians in the areas of
applied mathematics and analysis. The series alternates between
colloquium talks by internationally recognized experts in the field,
and less formal, more specialized seminars.In recent years, the
series has featured applications to diverse areas of science and
technology; examples include super-conductivity, nonlinear wave
propagation, optical fiber communications, and financial modeling.
The intent of the series is to bring together the applied mathematics
community on a regular basis, to present current results in the
field, and to strengthen the potential for communication and collaboration
between researchers with common interests. We meet for one session
per month during the academic year. The organizers welcome suggestions
for speakers and topics.
2009-10
Schedule - Future talks to be held at the Fields Institute
|
***POSTPONED TO JANUARY 2010***
November 11th, 2009
2:10 p.m.
Fields Institute,
Room 230 |
Jeff Schenker, Michigan State University
TBA
|
PAST TALKS
|
FRIDAY,
OCTOBER 9
2:00 p.m. |
**
Special Seminar Announcement**
-------------------------------------------------------
PDE/Applied Math/Analysis Seminar
John Ball, University of Oxford
'The Q-tensor theory of liquid crystals'
Bahen Centre, BA6183 |
October
13th, 2009
2:10 p.m.
Bahen 6183
( 40 St. George St.) |
Robert
V. Moody, University of Victoria (http://www.math.ualberta.ca/~rvmoody/rvm/)
Symmetry, diffraction, and the homometry problem
Diffraction has been the mainstay of experimental crystallography
for nearly a hundred years. Recent interest in quasicrystals
and aperiodic tilings has brought fresh insights into the
nature of diffraction and its relation to symmetry, especially
in the case of pure point diffraction.
In this talk I will try to make a case for diffraction as
an encoding of symmetry and then delve into the famous inverse
problem of unravelling the information about a structure from
information about its diffraction.
The diffraction is a measure. Which pure point measures can
occur as diffraction patterns and given such a measure how
does one find and classify all the structures that could have
produced it? This is the homometry problem. In answering it
we arrive naturally in the setting of certain stochastic processes.
The complexity of the classification revolves around the set
of extinctions in the diffraction.
The talk will be aimed at a general mathematical audience.
|
November
4th, 2009
2:10 p.m.
Fields Institute,
Room 230 |
Elliot
Lieb, Princeton University
A second look at the second law of thermodynamics
The increase of entropy was regarded as perhaps the most
perfect and unassailable law in physics and it was even supposed
to have philosophical import. Einstein, like most physicists
of his time, regarded the second
law of thermodynamics as one of the major achievements of
the field, and it entered his work in several ways. The essence
of the second law is the statement that all processes can
be quantified by an entropy
function whose increase is a necessary and sufficient condition
for a process to occur. As a fundamental physical law no deviation,
however tiny, is permitted and its consequences are far-reaching.
Current wisdom regards the second law as a consequence of
statistical mechanics but the entropy principle, which was
discovered before statistical mechanics was invented, ought
to be derivable from a few logical principles without recourse
to Carnot cycles, ideal gases and other assumptions about
such things as 'heat', 'hot' and 'cold', 'temperature', 'reversible
processes', etc. Like conservation of energy (the ``first''
law), the existence of a law so precise and so model-independent
must have a logical foundation that is independent of the
details of the constitution of matter. In this lecture the
foundations of the subject and the construction (with J. Yngvason)
of entropy from a few simple principles will be presented.
(No previous familiarity with the subject is required.)
A summary can be found in:
"A Guide to Entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics",
Notices of the Amer. Math. Soc. vol 45 571-581 (1998).
http://www.ams.org/notices/199805/lieb.pdf.
This paper received the American Mathematical Society 2002
Levi Conant prize for ``the best expository paper published
in either the Notices of the AMS or the Bulletin of the AMS
in the preceding five years''.
|
back to top
|
|
