The APDE seminar on Monday, 4/22, will be given by Dongxiao Yu (Berkeley) in-person in Evans 740, and will also be broadcasted online via Zoom from 4:10pm to 5:00pm PST. To participate, please email Federico Pasqualotto (fpasqualotto@berkeley.edu) or Mengxuan Yang (mxyang@math.berkeley.edu).

Title: Asymptotic stability of the sine-Gordon kinks under perturbations in weighted Sobolev norms

Abstract: I will present a joint work with Herbert Koch on the asymptotic stability of the sine-Gordon kinks under small perturbations in weighted Sobolev norms. Our main tool is the Bäcklund transform which reduces the study of the asymptotic stability of the kinks to the study of the asymptotic decay of solutions near zero. I will also compare our work with some previous work on the asymptotic stability of the sine-Gordon kinks.

The APDE seminar on Monday, 4/15, will be given by Tarek Elgindi (Duke) in-person in Evans 740, and will also be broadcasted online via Zoom from 4:10pm to 5:00pm PST. To participate, please email Federico Pasqualotto (fpasqualotto@berkeley.edu) or Mengxuan Yang (mxyang@math.berkeley.edu).

Title: Twisting in Hamiltonian flows and perfect fluids

Abstract: We will discuss a recent result joint with In-Jee Jeong and Theo Drivas. We prove that twisting in Hamiltonian flows on annular domains, which can be quantified by the differential winding of particles around the center of the domain, is stable to general perturbations. In fact, we prove the all-time stability of the lifted dynamics in an L2 sense (though single particle paths are generically unstable). These stability facts are used to establish several results related to the long-time behavior of inviscid fluid flows.

The APDE seminar on Monday, 4/8, will be given by Jens Wittsten (University of Borås) in-person in Evans 740, and will also be broadcasted online via Zoom from 4:10pm to 5:00pm PST. To participate, please email Federico Pasqualotto (fpasqualotto@berkeley.edu) or Mengxuan Yang (mxyang@math.berkeley.edu).

Title: Semiclassical quantization conditions for strained moiré lattices.

Abstract: When mechanical strain is applied to bilayer graphene in a certain way, an essentially one-dimensional moiré pattern can be seen. I will discuss a model for such systems and explain that it has approximately flat bands when the strain is very weak. The approximately flat bands correspond to approximate eigenvalues of infinite multiplicity, and they are obtained by generalizing the Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization condition for scalar symbols at a potential well to matrix-valued symbols with eigenvalues that coalesce precisely at the bottom of the well. The talk is based on joint work with Simon Becker.

The APDE seminar on Monday, 4/1, will be given by Vera Mikyoung Hur in-person in Evans 740, and will also be broadcasted online via Zoom from 4:10pm to 5:00pm PST. To participate, please email Federico Pasqualotto (fpasqualotto@berkeley.edu) or Mengxuan Yang (mxyang@math.berkeley.edu).

Title: Stable undular bores: rigorous analysis and validated numerics 

Abstract: I will discuss the ‘global’ nonlinear asymptotic stability of the traveling front solutions to the Korteweg-de Vries–Burgers equation, and other dispersive-dissipative perturbations of the Burgers equation. Earlier works made strong use of the monotonicity of the profile, for relatively weak dispersion effects. We exploit the modulation of the translation parameter, establishing a new stability criterion that does not require monotonicity. Instead, a certain Schrodinger operator in one dimension must have exactly one negative eigenvalue, so that a rank-one perturbation of the operator can be made positive definite. Counting the number of bound states of the Schrodinger equation, we find a sufficient condition in terms of the ’width’ of a front. We analytically verify that our stability criterion is met for an open set in the parameter regime including all monotone fronts. Our numerical experiments, revealing more stable fronts, suggest a computer-assisted proof. Joint with Blake Barker, Jared Bronski, and Zhao Yang.

The APDE seminar on Wednesday, 3/13, will be given by Jeremy Marzuola (UNC) in-person in Evans 748, and will also be broadcasted online via Zoom from 4:10pm to 5:00pm PST. To participate, please email Federico Pasqualotto (fpasqualotto@berkeley.edu) or Mengxuan Yang (mxyang@math.berkeley.edu). Please note the special time and location of this talk.

Title:  Spectral minimal partitions, nodal deficiency and the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map

Abstract:  The oscillation of a Laplacian eigenfunction gives a great deal of information about the manifold on which it is defined. This oscillation can be encoded in the nodal deficiency, an important geometric quantity that is notoriously hard to compute, or even estimate. Here we compare two recently obtained formulas for the nodal deficiency, one in terms of an energy function on the space of equipartitions of the manifold, and the other in terms of a two-sided Dirichlet-to-Neumann map defined on the nodal set. We relate these two approaches by giving an explicit formula for the Hessian of the equipartition energy in terms of the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map. This allows us to compute Hessian eigenfunctions, and hence directions of steepest descent, for the equipartition energy in terms of the corresponding Dirichlet-to-Neumann eigenfunctions. Our results do not assume bipartiteness, and hence are relevant to the study of spectral minimal partitions.  This is joint work with Greg Berkolaiko, Yaiza Canzani and Graham Cox.

The APDE seminar on Monday, 3/11, will be given by Hezekiah Grayer (Princeton) in-person in Evans 740, and will also be broadcasted online via Zoom from 4:10pm to 5:00pm PST. To participate, please email Federico Pasqualotto (fpasqualotto@berkeley.edu) or Mengxuan Yang (mxyang@math.berkeley.edu).

Title:  On the distribution of heat in fibered magnetic fields

Abstract: We study the equilibrium temperature distribution in a model for strongly magnetized plasmas in dimension two and higher. Provided the magnetic field is sufficiently structured (integrable in the sense that it is fibered by co-dimension one invariant tori, on most of which the field lines ergodically wander) and the effective thermal diffusivity transverse to the tori is small, it is proved that the temperature distribution is well approximated by a function that only varies across the invariant surfaces. The same result holds for “nearly integrable” magnetic fields up to a “critical” size. In this case, a volume of non-integrability is defined in terms of the temperature defect distribution and related the non-integrable structure of the magnetic field, confirming a physical conjecture of Paul-Hudson-Helander. Our proof crucially uses a certain quantitative ergodicity condition for the magnetic field lines on full measure set of invariant tori, which is automatic in two dimensions for magnetic fields without null points and, in higher dimensions, is guaranteed by a Diophantine condition on the rotational transform of the magnetic field.

This is joint work with Theodore D. Drivas and Dan Ginsberg.

The APDE seminar on Monday, 3/4, will be given by John Anderson (Stanford) in-person in Evans 740, and will also be broadcasted online via Zoom from 4:10pm to 5:00pm PST. To participate, please email Federico Pasqualotto (fpasqualotto@berkeley.edu) or Mengxuan Yang (mxyang@math.berkeley.edu).

Title: Shock formation for the Einstein–Euler system

Abstract: In this talk, I hope to describe elements of proving a certain stable singularity formation result for the Einstein-Euler system, which is the topic of work in progress with Jonathan Luk. I’ll first describe some motivating phenomena. Then, I will describe some of the main mathematical difficulties which present themselves when studying multidimensional shocks and why it is appropriate to call this a shock formation result. Finally, I will try to describe some of the main ideas that go into mathematically understanding shock formation, and the main difficulty in the case of Einstein–Euler.

The APDE seminar on Monday, 2/26, will be given by Ethan Sussman (Stanford) in-person in Evans 740, and will also be broadcasted online via Zoom from 4:10pm to 5:00pm PST. To participate, please email Federico Pasqualotto (fpasqualotto@berkeley.edu) or Mengxuan Yang (mxyang@math.berkeley.edu).

Title: Full asymptotics for Schrodinger wavepackets

Abstract: Since the work of Jensen–Kato, the theory of the Schrodinger–Helmholtz equation at low energy has been used to study wave propagation in various settings, both relativistic and nonrelativistic (i.e. the Schrodinger equation). Recently, Hintz has used these methods to study wave propagation on black hole spacetimes. Part of Hintz’s result is the production of asymptotics in all possible asymptotic regimes, including all joint large-time, large-radii regimes. We carry out the analogue of this analysis for the Schrodinger equation. Based on joint work with Shi-Zhuo Looi.

The APDE seminar on Monday, 2/5, will be given by Haoren Xiong (UCLA) in-person in Evans 740, and will also be broadcasted online via Zoom from 4:10pm to 5:00pm PST. To participate, please email Federico Pasqualotto (fpasqualotto@berkeley.edu) or Mengxuan Yang (mxyang@math.berkeley.edu).

Title: Toeplitz operators, semiclassical asymptotics for Bergman projections

Abstract: In the first part of the talk, we discuss boundedness conditions of Toeplitz operators acting on spaces of entire functions with quadratic exponential weights (Bargmann spaces), in connection with a conjecture by C. Berger and L. Coburn, relating Toeplitz and Weyl quantizations. In the second part of the talk (based on joint work in progress with H. Xu), we discuss the semiclassical asymptotics for Bergman kernels in exponentially weighted spaces of holomorphic functions. We shall review a direct approach to the construction of asymptotic Bergman projections, developed by A. Deleporte – M. Hitrik – J. Sj\”ostrand in the case of real analytic weights, and M. Hitrik – M. Stone in the case of smooth weights. We shall explore the case of Gevrey weights, which can be thought of as the interpolating case between the real analytic and smooth weights. In the case of Gevrey weights, Bergman kernel can be approximated in certain Gevrey symbol class up to a Gevrey type small error, in the semiclassical limit $h \to 0+$.

The APDE seminar on Monday, 12/4, will be given by Albert Ai (UW Madison) in-person in Evans 736, and will also be broadcasted online via Zoom from 4:10pm to 5:00pm PST. To participate, please email Federico Pasqualotto (fpasqualotto@berkeley.edu) or Mengxuan Yang (mxyang@math.berkeley.edu).

Title: Low Regularity Solutions for the Surface Quasi-Geostrophic Front Equation

Abstract: In this talk, we consider the well-posedness of the surface quasi-geostrophic (SQG) front equation in low regularity Sobolev spaces. By observing a null structure, we obtain access to a normal form transformation for the equation. Applying this normal form in the context of a paradifferential analysis with modified energies, we are able to prove balanced cubic energy estimates and thus local well-posedness at just half a derivative above the scaling-critical regularity threshold. This is joint work with Ovidiu-Neculai Avadanei.