Talks

Alternating sign matrices (ASM) and descending plane partitions (DPP) both have the concept of rank, and it has been known that the same number of them exist for each rank (conjectured in 1983 by W. H. Mills, David P. Robbins and Howard Rumsey, Jr., and proved in 1996 by Doron Zeilberger and by Greg Kuperberg independently). However, no explicit bijections between them have been found so far. This problem is known as the ASM-DPP bijection problem.

In 2020, Fischer and Konvalinka constructed a bijection between ASM(n)xDPP(n-1) and ASM(n-1)xDPP(n), where ASM(n) denotes the set of ASMs with rank n, and it is similar for DPP(n). This bijection was developed using the concept of signed bijections. I introduce the notion of compatibility of signed bijections to measure the naturalness of signed bijections and to simplify the construction. In this talk, I present the definition of compatibility and some of the results obtained from it. For example, these include the refined structure of Ge...

Our Cosmological Standard Model, LambdaCDM, is a remarkable success story. It describes our Universe’s evolution from the Big Bang until today in terms of only a small handful of parameters. Despite its many successes, LambdaCDM is not a fundamental theory. In particular, the microscopic origin of dark matter and dark energy remain among the greatest puzzles in modern physics. Of the two, dark energy poses a particularly vexing challenge, as we lack an understanding of the smallness of its value. At the same time, over the last decade, observations have revealed further cracks in the LambdaCDM model, manifesting as discrepancies between early and late universe determinations of its parameters.

In this lecture, I will first review the LambdaCDM model and establish why it is considered our best model of the Universe. In the second part, I will discuss the intriguing possibility that the cosmic tensions, referring to the observational and theoretical challenges mentioned above, are sig...

Totally positive (TP) matrices are matrices in which each minor is positive. First introduced in 1930's by I. Schoenberg and F. Gantmakher and M. Krein, these matrices proved to be important  in many areas of pure and applied mathematics. The notion of total positivity was generalized by G. Lusztig in the context of reductive Lie groups and inspired the discovery  of cluster algebras by S. Fomin and A. Zelevinsky.

In this mini-course, I will first review some basic features of TP matrices, including their spectral properties and discuss some of their classical applications. Then I will focus on weighted networks parametrization of TP matrices due to A. Berenstein, S. Fomin and A. Zelevinsky. I will show how elementary transformations of planar networks lead to criteria of total positivity and important examples of mutations in the theory of cluster algebras. Finally, I will explain how particular sequences of mutations can be used to construct exactly solvable nonlinear dynamical sy...

It is well known that the box-ball system discovered by Takahashi and Satsuma can be obtained by the ultra-discrete analogue of the discrete integrable system, including both the ultra-discrete analogue of the KdV lattice and the ultra-discrete analogue of the Toda lattice. This mini-course will demonstrate that it is possible to derive extended models of the box-ball systems related to the relativistic Toda lattice and the fundamental Toda orbits, which are obtained from the theory of orthogonal polynomials and their extensions. We will first introduce an elementary procedure for deriving box-ball systems from discrete KP equations. Then, we will discuss the relationship between discrete Toda lattices and their extensions based on orthogonal polynomial theory, and outline the exact solutions and ultra-discretization procedures for these systems. Additionally, we will introduce the box-ball system on R, which is obtained by clarifying its relationship with the Pitman transformation in ...

Whether we aim to test the fundamental symmetries of the standard model, or to understand the structure and reactions of nuclei or the equation of state of dense nuclear matter, it may be helpful or necessary to understand these phenomena starting from the underlying quarks and gluons which make up all known matter in the universe.  After describing the complexities of this endeavor, I will highlight some recent progress and opportunities along this research direction.

For the unharmonic oscillator equation I will show how discriminants, i.e. locus of degenerate eigenvalues, can be plotted inside stability space, literally a space of framed quadratic differentials. They respect chamber structure.

We show that the partial sums of the long Plucker relations for pairs of weakly separated Plucker coordinates oscillate around 0 on the totally nonnegative part of the Grassmannian. Our result generalizes the classical oscillating inequalities by Gantmacher–Krein (1941) and recent results on totally nonnegative matrix inequalities by Fallat–Vishwakarma (2023). In fact we obtain a characterization of weak separability, by showing that no other pair of Plucker coordinates satisfies this property. Weakly separated sets were initially introduced by Leclerc and Zelevinsky and are closely connected with the cluster algebra of the Grassmannian. Moreover, our work connects several fundamental objects such as weak separability, Temperley–Lieb immanants, and Plucker relations, and provides a very general and natural class of additive determinantal inequalities on the totally nonnegative part of the Grassmannian. This is joint work with Soskin.