Abstracts

May 29, 2026

Abstract:

The decomposition theorem is among the deepest known facts about the topology of complex projective varieties. For a map from a smooth complex projective variety \(X\) to a projective variety \(Y\), the theorem imposes strong structural constraints on the cohomology \(H(X)\) as an \(H(Y)\)-module. We show that many of these constraints are linear-algebraic consequences of classically-known properties of \(H(X)\). By formalizing this structure through the notion of Lefschetz modules, we obtain analogous decomposition statements in settings where the classical decomposition theorem does not apply, such as in combinatorial Hodge theory and for Chow rings modulo numerical equivalence. Joint work with Omid Amini and Matt Larson.

May 29, 2026

Abstract:

We prove that in any dimension n there exists an origin-symmetric ellipsoid of volume \(cn^2\) that contains no points of \(\mathbb{Z}^n\) other than the origin. Here \(c > 0\) is a universal constant. Equivalently, there exists a lattice sphere packing in \(\mathbb{R}^n\) whose density is at least \(cn^2 / 2^n\). Previously known constructions of sphere packings in \(\mathbb{R}^n\) had densities of the order of magnitude of \(nlog(n) / 2^n\). Our proof utilizes a stochastically evolving ellipsoid that accumulates at least \(cn^2\) lattice points on its boundary, while containing no lattice points in its interior except for the origin

May 29, 2026

Abstract: 

In the 1950s Phil Anderson made a prediction about the effect of random impurities on the conductivity properties of a crystal. Mathematically, these questions amount to the study of solutions of differential or difference equations and the associated spectral theory of self-adjoint operators obtained from an ergodic process. With the arrival of quasicrystals, in addition to random models, nonrandom lattice models such as those generated by irrational rotations or skew-rotations on tori have been studied over the past 30 years. 

By now, an extensive mathematical theory has developed around Anderson’s predictions, with several questions remaining open. This talk will attempt to survey certain aspects of the field, with an emphasis on the theory of \(SL(2,R)\) cocycles with an irrational or Diophantine rotation on the circle as base dynamics. In this setting, Artur Avila discovered about 15 years ago that the Lyapunov exponent is piecewise affine in the imaginary direction after complexification of the phase. In fact, the slopes of these affine functions are integer valued. This is easy to see in the uniformly hyperbolic case, which is equivalent to energies falling into the gaps of the spectrum, due to the winding number of the complexified Lyapunov exponent. Remarkably, this property persists also in the non-uniformly hyperbolic case, i.e., on the spectrum of the Schrödinger operator. This requires a delicate continuity property of the Lyapunov exponent in both energy and frequency. Avila built his global theory (Acta Math. 2015) on this quantization property. I will present some results with Rui HAN (Louisiana State) connecting Avila’s notion of acceleration (the slope of the complexified Lyapunov exponent in the imaginary phase direction) to the number of zeros of the determinants of finite-volume Hamiltonians relative to the complex phase. This connection, which builds on the machinery developed by Michael Goldstein and the author (GAFA 2008, Annals of Math. 2011),  allows one to answer questions arising in the supercritical case of Avila’s global theory concerning the measure of the second stratum, Anderson localization on this stratum, as well as settle a conjecture on the Hölder regularity of the integrated density of states.  We will also describe applications to the block Jacobi matrix setting which shed light on almost reducibility questions via duality. 

Abstract:

In the KPZ universality class, random growth and last-passage models in the plane converge to a universal object known as the directed landscape - a random directed metric encoding optimal paths and last-passage times.

In this talk, I will describe a bijection that recovers the full directed landscape from a sequence of independent Brownian motions. This construction is the natural scaling limit of the classical Robinson–Schensted–Knuth (RSK) correspondence and gives a clean dictionary between simple noise and rich random directed geometry.

Joint work with Duncan Dauvergne.