Scientific

After Birkhoff’s Pointwise Ergodic Theorem was proved in 1931, there have been many attempts to generalize the theorem along a subsequence of the integers instead of taking the entire se- quence (n). In this talk, we will present the following result of Roger Jones and Máté Wierdl:
If a sequence (an) satisfies an+1/an ≥ +1 + 1/(log n)12−ε , for some ε > 0, then in any aperiodic dynamical system (X, Σ, μ, T), we can always find a function f ∈ L2 such that the Cesàro averages along the se- quence (an) which is defined by An∈[N] f (Tan x) := N1 ∑ f (Tan x) (0.1) n∈[N] fail to converge in a set of positive measure.

Dave Morris (University of Lethbridge, Canada)

We will discuss graphs that have a unique hamiltonian cycle and are vertex-transitive, which means there is an automorphism that takes any vertex to any other vertex. Cycles are the only examples with finitely many vertices, but the situation is more interesting for infinite graphs. (Infinite graphs do not have "hamiltonian cycles," but there are natural analogues.) The case where the graph has only finitely many ends is not difficult, but we do not know whether there are examples with infinitely many ends. This is joint work in progress with Bobby Miraftab.

Reflections on the research developments that have contributed to this award, mostly to do with the distribution of primes and multiplicative functions, discussing my research team's contributions, and the possible future for several of these questions.

We propose an extension of the well-known Klausmeier model of vegetation to two plant species that consume water at different rates. Rather than competing directly, the plants compete through their intake of water, which is a shared resource between them. In semi-arid regions, the Klausmeier model produces vegetation spot patterns. We are interested in how the competition for water affects the co-existence and stability of patches of different plant species. We consider two plant types: a “thirsty” species and a “frugal” species, that only differ by the amount of water they consume per unit growth, while being identical in other aspects. We find that there is a finite range of precipitation rate for which two species can co-exist. Outside of that range (when the rate is either sufficiently low or high), the frugal species outcompetes the thirsty species. As the precipitation rate is decreased, there is a sequence of stability thresholds such that thirsty plant patches are the first to die off, while the frugal spots remain resilient for longer. The pattern consisting of only frugal spots is the most resilient. The next-most-resilient pattern consists of all-thirsty patches, with the mixed pattern being less resilient than either of the homogeneous patterns. We also examine numerically what happens for very large precipitation rates. We find that for a sufficiently high rate, the frugal plant takes over the entire range, outcompeting the thirsty plant.

In this talk, we are interested in a general class of multiplicative functions. For a function that belongs to this class, we will relate its “short average” to its “long average”. More precisely, we will compute the variance of such a function over short intervals by using Fourier analysis and by counting rational points on certain binary forms. The discussion is applicable to some interesting multiplicative functions such as

$$
\mu_k(n), \frac{\phi (n)}{n}, \frac{n}{\phi (n)}, \mu^2(n)\frac{\phi(n)}{n},
\sigma_\alpha (n), (-1)^{\#\left\{p: p^k | n \right\}}
$$

and many others and it provides various new results and improvements to the previous result
in the literature. This is a joint work with Mithun Kumar Das.

This event is part of the PIMS CRG Group on L-Functions in Analytic Number Theory. More details can be found on the webpage here: https://sites.google.com/view/crgl-functions/crg-weekly-seminar