2010 DiPerna Lectures

The 2010 DiPerna Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Lai-Sang Young, of Courant Institute for Mathematical Sciences, on January 28.

Department of Mathematics, University of California, Berkeley, presents

The DiPerna Memorial Lecture 2010

Lai-Sang Young (Courant Institute for Mathematical Sciences)

Thursday, January 28, 4 p.m.

60 Evans

Mathematics of shear-induced Chaos

Abstract: I will discuss (1) a dynamical phenomenon called shear-induced chaos and (2) how to capture the idea of chaos mathematically. The latter is a general review. I will begin with the work of Smale here at Berkeley some 40 years ago and discuss highlights of subsequent developments.

Rigorous results on shear-induced chaos are quite recent. Compared to early models of chaos, this kind is milder and more commonplace, giving rise to low dimensional strange attractors in many naturally occurring dynamical settings. I will use examples to illustrate the underlying geometric mechanism, and present theorems to show that they meet standard mathematical criteria for chaos.