METU Mathematics Seminars
Fall 2017


Previous Seminars: Spring 2017, Fall 2016, Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015, Fall 2014, Spring 2014, Fall 2013, Spring 2013, Fall 2012, Spring 2012, Fall 2011, Spring 2011.


The seminars will be held in Gündüz İkeda Room at 15:40 unless otherwise stated.


October 12
Bilkent University
Straight lines in K3-surfaces
I will discuss a very classical and intuitive problem, namely, counting straight lines in spatial surfaces. There are infinitely many lines in planes and quadrics, and there are famous 27 lines in each smooth cubic. Starting with degree four, a generic surface does not contain a single line; however, some of them do. I will start with the classical example of quartic containing 64 lines (Schur, 1882) and move towards very recent results, including the upper bound of 64 lines for quartics, the classification of quartics with many lines, bounds for other models of K3-surfaces (sextics in the 4-space, octics in the 5-space, etc.), and several related statements (e.g., real lines in real surfaces). Should time permit, fields of definition of positive characteristic will be considered as well.

The talk should be accessible to graduate and advanced undergraduate and high school students specializing in any area of mathematics.

October 19
Bilkent University
Fusion systems and p-local finite groups
If G is a finite group and p a prime dividing the order of G, Sylow's Theorem tells us that G has a p-subgroup of largest possible order, and that such a group is essentially unique. This begins the study of the p-local structure of finite groups: That part of that group visible to a particular prime. These data are organized in a category called a "fusion system."

The p-local study of finite groups has been an area of great interest to group theorists for decades, but more recently connections to algebraic topology have surfaced as well. The Martino-Priddy Conjecture states that two groups have p-equivalent classifying spaces if and only if their fusion systems are isomorphic. In the course of proving this result, it became necessary to think of fusion systems as algebraic objects in their own right, separated from the finite groups in which they originally arose.

Following Puig and Broto-Levi-Oliver, once one has identified the key p-local structures of a finite group, one has introduced a new type of algebraic object, a "p-local finite group." These are group-like algebraic objects that only exist at a particular prime. p-local finite groups can be seen as more general than finite groups, which live in all primes at once. In this talk we will introduce these concepts and give a brief overview of how fusion theory serves as a bridge between finite groups, algebraic topology, and representation theory.

October 26
METU
Constructions of Cyclic Subspace Codes and Maximum Rank Distance Codes
This talk is a survey of the recent results on the constructions of cyclic subspace codes and maximum rank distance codes. Linearized polynomials are the main tools used to introduce both constructions. This is a joint work with Ferruh Özbudak.

November 2
METU Department of Physics
Mathematics of Gravitational Waves
Direct detection of gravitational waves from merging binary black holes and binary neutron stars have been recently made. These observations confirm Einstein's prediction (dating 1916) which says that accelerated massive objects create propagating ripples in space-time that amounts to tiny but measurable fluctuations in the metric of space-time. To interpret the observations, strong field regime of gravity was necessary to understand.

In this talk I will give a broad summary of the mathematical ideas such as the hyperbolic nature of Einstein's equations and perturbative and exact wave solutions and some related concepts. Gravity waves have just given us another tool to see the past of the universe: for example, neutron star neutron star collision that generated gravity waves also explained the origins of all precious metals silver, gold, platinum and other heavy elements in the universe.

November 9
METU
Hyperfinite Borel equivalence relations and group actions
This will be a survey talk covering some results and open questions regarding hyperfinite Borel equivalence relations. A Borel equivalence relation on a Polish space is called hyperfinite if it is the increasing union of Borel equivalence relations with finite equivalence classes. Such equivalence relations play a central role in the theory of measurable equivalence relations. Even though the structure of hyperfinite equivalence relations is well understood, there are still some important open problems. The main question we shall focus on in this talk is the following: What kinds of groups, when they act on Polish spaces, necessarily induce hyperfinite Borel equivalence relations as their orbit equivalence relations?

November 16
METU
Commutator lengths in groups
The commutator length of an element of the commutator subgroup of a group is defined as the minimal number needed to express the given element as a product of commutators. After introducing the necessary notions, we will talk on the commutator lengths (and also stable commutator lengths) of elements in the alternating group, free groups, mapping class groups and the Thompson’s group F. We will use covering space to write a power of a commutator as a smaller number of commutators.

November 23
Sabancı University
Tameness in the Frechet spaces of analytic functions

November 30
METU Department of Economics
Collaboration and Free Riding in Team Contests
The organization of team contests can enhance productivity if teammates with complementary skills are able to allocate the teams tasks efficiently, but can also suffer from free-riding incentives. We report the results of a real-effort experiment in which production requires the completion of two complementary tasks, at which workers have heterogeneous skills. We vary whether participants: compete individually; compete in teams where each member must complete each task; or compete in teams where the agents can divide tasks between them and potentially specialize in the task they do best. We report three main results. First, individuals who must work alone divide their work time in a way that is qualitatively consistent with the theoretical predictions, but allocate too little time to their weaker task. Second, there is no difference in productivity or free-riding behavior between individual contests and team contests where teammates cannot specialize. Finally, and most notably, when teammates can divide work tasks, they allocate more time to the tasks they are best at and experience a strong productivity gain. This is true even among teams that cannot communicate despite the potential for coordination failure or coordination on Pareto dominated equilibria but the effect is strongest when communication is available.

December 5(note unusual date)
Ecole Polytechnique-Paris
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December 14
Department of Mathematics, University of Tehran
Some recent results on Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity

December 21
Institute
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December 28
Institute
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January 4
Institute
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