Dr. Steffen Marcus and Dr. Paul Wiita, TCNJ
March 22, 2016
12:30 – 1:30pm
SCP-101
*Refreshments will be served
Dr. Steffen Marcus, Department of Mathematics and Statistics
“Strings, Curves, Maps, and Monoids: Mixing Ideas from Physics and Combinatorics to Study Problems in Algebraic Geometry”
Abstract: In the early 1990s, physicists and mathematicians used ideas from “Mirror Symmetry”, a conjectural mathematical framework coming from Physics, in unexpected ways to predict solutions to geometric counting problems that had long stumped mathematicians for over a century. In this talk I will describe how ideas from mirror symmetry have influenced not only how I pose questions in my own research, but also how I go about answering them. I will also describe how Alana Huszar, a current TCNJ senior, is combining recent constructions in algebra and combinatorics to help my collaborators and I push the mathematical side of this theory further.
Dr. Paul Wiita, Department of Physics
“Measuring and Modeling Variability from Active Galaxies”
Abstract: Extragalactic radio sources are the largest connected objects in the universe, often spanning over a million light years. They are produced by jets of hot, low density plasma moving at nearly the speed of light that are launched from the vicinity of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies. Using the Kepler satellite we have measured variations from many active galaxies. TCNJ students have also helped in modeling variations arising from both turbulence in the relativistic jets and from changes in the propagating relativistic jets themselves. Together these approaches have produced light curves and power spectra in good agreement with observations for a remarkable five decades in time or frequency.
