Scientific

Reflections on the research developments that have contributed to this award, mostly to do with the distribution of primes and multiplicative functions, discussing my research team's contributions, and the possible future for several of these questions.

We propose an extension of the well-known Klausmeier model of vegetation to two plant species that consume water at different rates. Rather than competing directly, the plants compete through their intake of water, which is a shared resource between them. In semi-arid regions, the Klausmeier model produces vegetation spot patterns. We are interested in how the competition for water affects the co-existence and stability of patches of different plant species. We consider two plant types: a “thirsty” species and a “frugal” species, that only differ by the amount of water they consume per unit growth, while being identical in other aspects. We find that there is a finite range of precipitation rate for which two species can co-exist. Outside of that range (when the rate is either sufficiently low or high), the frugal species outcompetes the thirsty species. As the precipitation rate is decreased, there is a sequence of stability thresholds such that thirsty plant patches are the first to die off, while the frugal spots remain resilient for longer. The pattern consisting of only frugal spots is the most resilient. The next-most-resilient pattern consists of all-thirsty patches, with the mixed pattern being less resilient than either of the homogeneous patterns. We also examine numerically what happens for very large precipitation rates. We find that for a sufficiently high rate, the frugal plant takes over the entire range, outcompeting the thirsty plant.

In this talk, we are interested in a general class of multiplicative functions. For a function that belongs to this class, we will relate its “short average” to its “long average”. More precisely, we will compute the variance of such a function over short intervals by using Fourier analysis and by counting rational points on certain binary forms. The discussion is applicable to some interesting multiplicative functions such as

$$
\mu_k(n), \frac{\phi (n)}{n}, \frac{n}{\phi (n)}, \mu^2(n)\frac{\phi(n)}{n},
\sigma_\alpha (n), (-1)^{\#\left\{p: p^k | n \right\}}
$$

and many others and it provides various new results and improvements to the previous result
in the literature. This is a joint work with Mithun Kumar Das.

This event is part of the PIMS CRG Group on L-Functions in Analytic Number Theory. More details can be found on the webpage here: https://sites.google.com/view/crgl-functions/crg-weekly-seminar

There are two rotary motors in biology, ATP synthase and the bacterial flagellar motor. Both are driven by transmembrane ionic currents. We consider an idealized model of such a motor, essentially an electrostatic turbine. The model has a rotor and a stator, which are closely fitting cylinders. Attached to the rotor is a fixed density of negative charge, with helical symmetry. Positive ions move longitudinally by drift and diffusion on the stator. A key assumption is local electroneutrality of the combined charge distribution. With this setup we derive explicit formulae for the transmembrane current and the angular velocity of the rotor in terms of the transmembrane electrochemical potential difference of the positive ions and the mechanical torque on the motor. This relationship between "forces" and "fluxes" turns out to be linear, and given by a symmetric positive definite matrix, as anticipated by non-equilibrium thermodynamics, although we do not make any use of that formalism in deriving the result. The equal off-diagonal terms of this 2x2 matrix describe the electromechanical coupling of the motor. Although macroscopic, the model can be used as a foundation for stochastic simulation via the Einstein relation.

In this talk, I'll present a counterintuitive construction of A. Katok (exposited by Milnor) which at first glance seems to contradict Fubini's theorem. In particular, one can build a full-measure set E in the unit square and a foliation of the square by smooth curves such that any leaf of the foliation meets E in exactly one point. If time permits, I'll also mention work of Ruelle-Wilkinson and Shub-Wilkinson that shows these sorts of pathological examples are common in non-uniformly hyperbolic dynamics.