Rice University Math Department Calendar

    September 2009          October 2009          November 2009    
 Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa   Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa   Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
        1  2  3  4  5                1  2  3    1  2  3  4  5  6  7
  6  7  8  9 10 11 12    4  5  6  7  8  9 10    8  9 10 11 12 13 14
 13 14 15 16 17 18 19   11 12 13 14 15 16 17   15 16 17 18 19 20 21
 20 21 22 23 24 25 26   18 19 20 21 22 23 24   22 23 24 25 26 27 28
 27 28 29 30            25 26 27 28 29 30 31   29 30

4:00 pm Monday, October 26, 2009
Stulken Topology Seminar: Identifying the Canonical Component for the Whitehead Link
by Emily Landes (University of Texas) in HD 427

Although character varieties have proven to be a useful tool in studying hyperbolic 3-manifolds, only recently have explicit models for the SL(2,C) character varieties of twist knot complements been constructed. As the twist knot complements can be obtained by Dehn filling one of the cusps of the Whitehead link complement, we are naturally interested in determining the canonical component of the Whitehead link character variety and studying the relationship among character varieties of manifolds obtained by Dehn surgery. In my talk I will show how the canonical component of the Whitehead link character variety is P^2 blown-up at 6 points and discuss the canonical components for a few other hyperbolic 2-component link complements.Host Department: Rice University-Mathematics
Submitted by shelly@rice.edu

4:00 pm Thursday, October 29, 2009
Colloquium: Schroedinger equations with potentials generated by shifts and skew-shifts
by Michael Goldstein (University of Toronto) in HB 227

In this talk we give an exposition of the ideas, methods and technological tools developed in last ten years for the analysis of one-dimensional diﬀerence Schroedinger equations with potentials generated by shift and skew-shift H(x, ω)ϕ (n) ≡ −ϕ(n − 1) − ϕ(n + 1) + V (Tω^n(x))ϕ(n) = Eϕ(n) , n ∈ Z. Here Tω is a shift Tω (x) = x + ω, x, ω ∈ Tν , or a skew-shift, Tω (x, y) = (x + ω, y + x), (x, y) ∈ T^2 , ω ∈ T, and T^nω , n ∈ Z, stands for the n-th iteration of T . We state also the central open problems in this ﬁeld. Host Department: Rice University-Mathematics
Submitted by dani@rice.edu