Events

MAGIC Launch Lecture 2023

Sep
28
Thu 2023

16:00 - 17:00

Organised by Sam Blackburn.

Hosted by University of Nottingham.

Title - Exploring the landscape of Fano varieties: geometry, computation, and machine learning

Speaker - Alexander Kasprzyk, Associate Professor in Geometry (University of Nottingham) 

Algebraic geometry is one of the gems of pure mathematics. Essentially concerned with the study of shapes described by systems of polynomial equations, it builds a fundamental bridge between algebra and geometry, and informs many areas of modern mathematics and theoretical physics.

One of the fundamental open problems in algebraic geometry is the classification of Fano varieties: shapes with positive curvature which form the "atomic pieces" of geometry. Although known to be finite in each dimension (thanks in part to work by UK Fields Medalist Caucher Birkar), even the classification in dimension three is largely mysterious.

Recent ideas taken from mirror symmetry help translate this classification problem into a combinatorial question which can be tackled by computers. Many centuries of runtime on High Performance Computing clusters is providing the first conjectural glimpse of the landscape of Fano varieties. This has transported an abstract theoretical challenge into the world of Big Data. Much still remains to be understood, however tools from data science -- including machine learning -- are finally allowing us to begin making sense of the rich mathematical structure hidden within this classification.

MAGIC Launch Lecture 2022

Sep
28
Wed 2022

16:00 - 17:00

Organised by Sam Blackburn.

Hosted by University of Newcastle.

Title: Coproducts, knots and quantum groups
Speaker: Martina Balagovic (Newcastle University)

Quantum groups are certain quasitriangular bialgebras defined in the 1980s as deformations of enveloping algebras of Lie algebras, with motivation coming from quantum physics.

I will explain what that means, and explain two ideas which lead to one of their applications:

  1. 1. How reversing arrows in a definition of an algebra (a structure with a product and a unit) produces a coalgebra (a structure with a coproduct and a counit), and how a compatible algebra and coagebra structure provides a setting in which it is possible to pose a certain "universal" version of the Yang Baxter equation, which describes scattering in statistical mechanics.
  2. 2. How quantum groups provide a "universal" solution to the Yang Baxter equation, and how such solutions can be used to generate invariants of knots.

Despite some long words from physics and topology, this will be a talk about algebra and representation theory, and assume only a good knowledge of linear algebra (including some understanding of tensor products).

At the end, to provide a link with some recent developments in the field, I will briefly discuss how adding the boundary on the physics side of this story changes the algebra and the topology. 

MAGIC live question and answer session

May
31
Tue 2022

11:00 - 12:00

Organised by Professor Peter Ashwin.

Hosted by University of Exeter.

All MAGIC students are invited to join a virtual question and answer session on Tuesday 31 May at 11am to ask any questions concerning MAGIC. The panel will consist of Prof Peter Ashwin – Director of MAGIC (University of Exeter) Dr Yuri Bazlov – Deputy Director of MAGIC (University of Manchester) Prof Tim Phillips – Chair of MAGIC Programme Committee (Cardiff University) The session will take place via Zoom and a link to join the session will be made available under the “This week” section of the website on the day of the session. Please ensure that you are logged in to your MAGIC Zoom account in order to attend. We look forward to seeing you!

MAGIC launch lecture 2021-2022

Sep
30
Thu 2021

16:00 - 17:00

Organised by Sam Blackburn.

Hosted by University of East Anglia.

Dear All,

You are invited to join this year’s MAGIC launch lecture on Thursday 30 September at 16:00.

Please do attend if you are able to. Staff, students and researchers are all welcome.

To join please go to “This week” and select the “Join lecture” button which will appear shortly before the start of the lecture.

Please note you will you need to have set up a MAGIC Zoom account to join this live lecture – instructions on how to do this can be found in the "How to join a  live lecture" thread on the MAGIC General Forum.

Should you be unable to join on the day the lecture will be recorded and available to view at a later time.

MAGIC Launch Lecture Title: Thermalisation in weakly nonlinear chains
Speaker: Davide Proment (University of East Anglia)
Date: Thursday 30 September 2021 at 16:00 – 17:00

Abstract: I will present some theoretical results on the seminal $\alpha$-Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou (FPUT) problem, that is a one-dimensional system formed N=16,32 and 64 masses connected by nonlinear quadratic springs.

The theoretical approach is based on resonant wave-wave interaction theory and wave turbulence theory.

Assuming the weakly nonlinear regime, the one originally considered by Fermi to model heat transport in crystals, I will show that the long time dynamics of the system is ruled by exact discrete wave resonances.

After giving a general introduction to the 1955 Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou model, a system that inspired areas in mathematics and physics like integrable systems, ergodic theory, nonlinear waves, and statistical mechanics, I will discuss the main idea of the wave-wave interaction theory and wave turbulence theory.

I will show that the first non-trivial wave resonances correspond to six-wave interactions as solutions of Diophantine equations.

These interactions are responsible for the thermalisation process in the FPUT system and explain its extremely long time scale.

Numerical simulations supporting out theoretical predictions will be briefly discussed (based on the joint work with Miguel Onorato, Lara Vozella and Yuri V. L'vov entitled "A route to thermalisation in the $\alpha$-Fermi-Pasta-Ulam(-Tsingou) system", PNAS 112, 4208-4213, 2005)

I hope you will be able to join us.

Kind regards,

Sam Blackburn
MAGIC Administrator

MAGIC launch lecture 2020-2021

Oct
1
Thu 2020

16:00 - 17:00

Organised by Sam Blackburn.

Hosted by Durham University.

Oct
3
Thu 2019

15:00 - 16:00

Organised by Sam Blackburn.

Hosted by Durham University.

Oct
3
Thu 2019

10:00 - 11:30

Organised by Professor Peter Ashwin.

Hosted by University of Exeter.

Feb
28
Thu 2019

14:00 - 15:00

Organised by Sam Blackburn.

Hosted by University of Newcastle.

Feb
26
Tue 2019

16:00 - 17:30

Organised by Sam Blackburn.

Hosted by University of Exeter.

Jan
18
Fri 2019

10:05 - 10:20

Organised by Dr Martina Balagovic.

Hosted by University of Newcastle.

Jan
14
Mon 2019

10:00 - 10:30

Organised by Dr Martina Balagovic.

Hosted by University of Newcastle.

Jan
11
Fri 2019

11:45 - 12:30

Organised by Dr Martina Balagovic.

Hosted by University of Newcastle.

Jan
11
Fri 2019

11:45 - 12:30

Organised by Dr Martina Balagovic.

Hosted by University of Newcastle.

Dec
18
Tue 2018

10:30 - 12:30

Organised by Dr Omar Lakkis.

Hosted by University of Sussex.

Dec
17
Mon 2018

10:05 - 10:55

Organised by Dr Omar Lakkis.

Hosted by University of Sussex.