Applied Mathematics and Computation Seminar
Discrete Harmonic Functions and Dynamics
Professor Renato Feres, Washington University, St. Louis

The theory of dynamical systems is, very broadly, about the study of actions of groups or semigroups of transformations of a space X. For example, flows and iterations of invertible maps are examples of actions of R and Z, respectively, and problems from diverse areas of mathematics have lead to dynamics with more general types of groups, such as SL(2,R) which will figure prominently in this talk. Given a dynamical system with group G and space X I will focus on Markov chains on X derived from random walks on G and the associated space of harmonic functions on X. I will discuss a dynamical version of Liouville's theorem about bounded harmonic functions being constant, show an interesting example of infinite dimensional chaotic system and fantasize about what a dynamical Dirichlet problem might mean in this context.

Refreshments at 3:45

4:00pm–5:00pm, Tuesday, October 6, 2009 in LGRT 1634

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