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Stochastic Systems for Anomalous Diffusion

Diffusion refers to the movement of a particle or larger object through space subject to random effects. Mathematical models for diffusion phenomena give rise to stochastic processes, including classes of processes known collectively as diffusions or random walks. Anomalous diffusion describes processes that exhibit behaviour deviating fundamentally from the simplest diffusion models. Various physical, biological, or social mechanisms can produce anomalous diffusion.

The programme will bring together researchers in probability, stochastic analysis, and related areas, as well as (through applications of anomalous diffusion) mathematical physicists, ecologists, and materials scientists, and (through sampling algorithms) researchers in computational statistics and machine learning. The programme is built around thematically linked workshops, and will be supported by seminar series, problem sessions, engagement events, and a social programme. 

Professor Balint Toth will participate as the Clay Lecturer during October and November 2024.

CMI Enhancement and Partnership Program.

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Venue: Isaac Newton Institue

Extremal Combinatorics

Extremal combinatorics concerns itself with problems about how large or small a finite collection of objects can be while satisfying certain conditions. Questions of this type arise naturally across mathematics, so this area has close connections and interactions with a broad array of other fields, including number theory, group theory, model theory, probability, statistical physics, optimization, and theoretical computer science.

The area has seen huge growth in the twenty-first century and, particularly in recent years, there has been a steady stream of solutions to important longstanding problems and many powerful new methods have been introduced. These advances include improvements in absorption techniques which have facilitated the proof of the existence of designs and related objects, the breakthrough on the sunflower conjecture whose further development eventually led to the proof of the Kahn–Kalai conjecture in discrete probability and the discovery of interactions between spectral graph theory and the study of equiangular lines in discrete geometry. These and other groundbreaking advances will be the central theme of this semester program.

Professor Gabor Tardos (Alfréd Rényi Institute) has been appointed as a Clay Senior Scholar to participate in this program.

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Venue: Simons Laufer Mathematical Research Institute

Random Tensors and Related Topics

The Random Tensors and Related Topics 2024 program is part of an emerging biennial conference series that aims to unite diverse mathematics research communities working on tensors.

Random tensors are expected to play a growing role in many areas of mathematics, physics, and computer science, but communities working with tensors have developed different approaches to their study, with different tools and results. This is the second event in a series of encounters aimed at exploring the connections between these approaches at the technical and conceptual level, with an emphasis on mathematics and statistics, quantum information, condensed matter physics, and quantum gravity and discrete geometry.

CMI Enhancement and Partnership Program

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Venue: Institut Henri Poincaré

Probability and Statistics of Discrete Structures

Random graphs and related random discrete structures lie at the forefront of applied probability and statistics, and are core topics across a wide range of scientific disciplines where mathematical ideas are used to model and understand real-world networks. At the same time, random graphs pose challenging mathematical and algorithmic problems that have attracted attention from probabilists and combinatorialists since at least 1960, following the pioneering work of Erdős and Renyi.

Around the turn of the millennium, as very large data sets became available, several applied disciplines started to realize that many real-world networks, even though they are from various origins, share fascinating features. In particular, many such networks are small worlds, meaning that graph distances in them are typically quite small, and they are scale-free, in the sense that the number of connections made by their elements is extremely heterogeneous. This program is devoted to the study of the probabilistic and statistical properties of such networks. Central tools include graphon theory for dense graphs, local weak convergence for sparse graphs, and scaling limits for the critical behavior of graphs or stochastic processes on them. The program is aimed at pure and applied mathematicians interested in network problems.

Professor Omer Angel (British Columbia) has been appointed as a Clay Senior Scholar to participate in this program.

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Venue: Simons Laufer Mathematical Research Institute

Motivic Homotopy Theory

Held in Park City, Utah, IAS/PCMI is an intensive three-week residential conference that includes several parallel sets of activities aimed at different groups of participants across the entire mathematics community. These activities include:

  • program for mathematics researchers
  • short courses for graduate students
  • lecture series for undergraduate students
  • undergraduate faculty program
  • faculty workshop on rehumanizing mathematics

At the annual Summer Session, all of PCMI’s programs meet simultaneously, pursuing individual courses of study designed to enrich participants in mathematical topics appropriate for their level, and participating in cross-program activities based on the principle that each group has something important to teach and to learn from the others. The rich mathematical experience combined with interaction among groups with different backgrounds and professional needs increases each participant’s appreciation of the mathematical community as a whole and results in an increased understanding and awareness of the issues confronting mathematics and mathematics education today. 

Professor Aravind Asok (USC) and Professor Fabien Morel (München) have been appointed as Clay Senior Scholars to participate in this program.

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Venue: Park City Mathematics Institute

New Frontiers in Curvature: Flows, General Relativity, Minimal Submanifolds, and Symmetry

Geometry, PDE, and Relativity are subjects that have shown intriguing interactions in the past several decades, while simultaneously diverging, each with an ever growing number of branches. Recently, several major breakthroughs have been made in each of these fields using techniques and ideas from the others. 

This program is aimed at connecting various branches of Geometry, PDE, and Relativity and at enhancing collaborations across these disciplines and will include four main topics: Geometric Flows, Geometric problems in Mathematical Relativity, Global Riemannian Geometry, and Minimal Submanifolds. Specifically the program focuses on a central goal, which is to advance our knowledge toward Riemannian (sub)manifolds under geometric conditions, such as curvature lower bounds, by developing techniques in, for example, geometric flows and minimal submanifolds and further fostering new connections.

Professor André Neves (Chicago) has been appointed as a Clay Senior Scholar to participate in this program.

CMI Enhancement and Partnership Program.

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Venue: Simons Laufer Mathematical Research Institute

Special Geometric Structures and Analysis

This program sits at the intersection between differential geometry and analysis but also connects to several other adjacent mathematical fields and to theoretical physics. Differential geometry aims to answer questions about very regular geometric objects (smooth Riemannian manifolds) using the tools of differential calculus. A fundamental object is the curvature tensor of a Riemannian metric: an algebraically complicated object that involves 2nd partial derivatives of the metric. Many questions in differential geometry can therefore be translated into questions about the existence or properties of the solutions of systems of (often) nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs). The PDE systems that arise in geometry have historically stimulated the development of powerful new analytic methods. In most cases the nonlinearity of these systems makes ‘closed form’ expressions for a solution impossible: instead more abstract methods must be employed.

The aim of this program is to study geometric and analytic aspects of special holonomy metrics, instanton bundle over such spaces and the calibrated submanifolds within them. Because these objects are Einstein metrics, Yang–Mills connections and minimal submanifolds respectively they fit into a wider geometric framework. But because each of them satisfies a first-order PDE system they enjoy various special properties. This program takes the position that the natural viewpoint, both geometrically and analytically, is to consider these three classes of closely-related geometric objects together. A common feature is that weak solutions to these higher-dimensional equations may have interesting non-isolated singular sets whose detailed geometric and analytic structure is still poorly understood. Improving our understanding of such (partial) regularity of solutions is a key component of the program.

Professor Vincent Guedj (Toulouse) has been appointed as a Clay Senior Scholar to participate in this program.

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Venue: Simons Laufer Mathematical Research Institute

Commutative Algebra

Commutative algebra is, in its essence, the study of algebraic objects, such as rings and modules over them, arising from polynomials and integral numbers.     It has numerous connections to other fields of mathematics including algebraic geometry, algebraic number theory, algebraic topology and algebraic combinatorics. Commutative Algebra has witnessed a number of spectacular developments in recent years, including the resolution of long-standing problems, with new techniques and perspectives leading to an extraordinary transformation in the field. The main focus of the program will be on these developments. These include the recent solution of Hochster’s direct summand conjecture in mixed characteristic that employs the theory of perfectoid spaces, a new approach to the Buchsbaum–Eisenbud–Horrocks conjecture on the Betti numbers of modules of finite length, recent progress on the study of Castelnuovo–Mumford regularity, the proof of Stillman’s conjecture and ongoing work on its effectiveness, a novel strategy to Green’s conjecture on the syzygies of canonical curves based on the study of Koszul modules and their generalizations, new developments in the study of various types of multiplicities, theoretical and computational aspects of Gröbner bases, and the implicitization problem for Rees algebras and its applications.

Professor Bernd Ulrich (Purdue) has been appointed as a Clay Senior Scholar to participate in this program.

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Venue: Simons Laufer Mathematical Research Institute

Noncommutative Algebraic Geometry

Derived categories of coherent sheaves on algebraic varieties were originally conceived as technical tools for studying cohomology, but have since become central objects in fields ranging from algebraic geometry to mathematical physics, symplectic geometry, and representation theory. Noncommutative algebraic geometry is based on the idea that any category sufficiently similar to the derived category of a variety should be regarded as (the derived category of) a “noncommutative algebraic variety”; examples include semiorthogonal components of derived categories, categories of matrix factorizations, and derived categories of noncommutative dg-algebras. This perspective has led to progress on old problems, as well as surprising connections between seemingly unrelated areas. In recent years there have been great advances in this domain, including new tools for constructing semiorthogonal decompositions and derived equivalences, progress on conjectures relating birational geometry and singularities to derived categories, constructions of moduli spaces from noncommutative varieties, and instances of homological mirror symmetry for noncommutative varieties. The goal of this program is to explore and expand upon these developments. 

Professor Mikhail Kapranov (Kavli) has been appointed as a Clay Senior Scholar to participate in this program.

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Venue: Simons Laufer Mathematical Research Institute

Group Actions and Rigidity: Around the Zimmer Program

This term focuses on rigidity of group actions with some focus on issues that arise out of Zimmer’s groundbreaking work in the 1980’s. Areas of interest range from local and global rigidity of group actions to special rigidity phenomena in small dimensions to symmetry groups of geometric structures to measure rigidity results for quite general group actions with hyperbolicity.

This broad area has seen a very large number of dramatic breakthroughs in recent years. The goal of the term is to bring together experts and people in adjacent areas to share ideas and techniques and to foster additional breakthroughs. There will also be a significant component of the term dedicated to introducing younger participants to the broad area.

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Venue: Institut Henri Poincaré

Toric Topology, Geometry and Polyhedral Products

This Focus Program will build upon the work of the Jan-Jun 2020 Thematic Program on Toric Topology and Polyhedral Products. 

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Venue: Fields Institute

Diophantine Geometry

Number Theory concerns the study of properties of the integers, rational numbers, and other structures that share similar features. It is a central branch of mathematics with a well-known feature: it is often the case that easy-to-state problems in number theory turn out to be exceedingly difficult (e.g. Fermat’s Last Theorem), and their study leads to groundbreaking discoveries in other fields of mathematics.

A fundamental theme in number theory concerns the study of integer and rational solutions to Diophantine equations. This topic originated at least 3,700 years ago (as documented in babylonian clay tablets) and it has evolved into the highly sophisticated field of Diophantine Geometry. There are deep and fruitful interactions between Diophantine Geometry and seemingly distant fields such as representation theory, algebraic geometry, topology, complex analysis, and mathematical logic, to mention a few. In recent years, these connections have led to a large number of new results and, specially, to the partial or complete resolution of important conjectures in the field.

While the study of rational solutions of diophantine equations initiated thousands of years ago, our knowledge on this subject has dramatically improved in recent years. Especially, we have witnessed spectacular progress in aspects such as height formulas and height bounds for algebraic points, automorphic methods, unlikely intersection problems, and non-abelian and p-adic approaches to algebraic degeneracy of rational points. All these groundbreaking advances in the study of rational and algebraic points in varieties will be the central theme of the semester program “Diophantine Geometry” at MSRI. The main purpose of this program is to bring together experts as well as enthusiastic young researchers to learn from each other, to initiate and continue collaborations, to update on recent breakthroughs, and to further advance the field by making progress on fundamental open problems and by developing further connections with other branches of mathematics. 

Professor Mark Kisin (Harvard) has been appointed at a Clay Senior Scholar to participate in this program.

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Venue: MSRI