CO Prof Talk: Jonathan Leake
February 26, 2025
5:00 PM–6:00 PM
TBD
Title: Mason's conjectures for graphs
Abstract: Much of the work of recent Fields medalist June Huh is related to proving log-concavity statements related to a certain generalization of graphs called matroids. One such example was the resolution of the Mason's conjectures with Petter Brändén (also proven independently by Anari-Liu-Oveis Gharan-Vinzant), which we now describe for graphs. Given a graph G, let c(k) denote the number of subforests of G with k edges. Then c(0), c(1), …, c(n) forms a log-concave sequence, which means that c(k)^2 >= c(k-1) * c(k+1) for all k. The proof uses the exciting new machinery of Lorentzian polynomials which has seen many applications in combinatorics and computer science. In this talk, I will go through the proof of this result for graphs, which will utilize an interesting mix of basic calculus, graph theory, and linear algebra.
AMATH Prof Talk: Mohamed Hibat-Allah
February 6, 2025
4:00 PM–5:00 PM
MC 4040
Title: Language Models for Many-Body Physics
Abstract: Natural language processing (NLP) tasks can be extremely complex, yet recent “language models” have achieved remarkable success. Well-known examples include ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, which perform at near-human levels on a wide range of tasks such as speech recognition, machine translation, and text generation. Surprisingly, these models are also useful for problems outside of NLP.
In this talk, I will show how we can adapt language models—particularly recurrent neural networks (RNNs)—to study quantum many-body systems. By carefully modifying and training RNNs for physics problems, we obtain state-of-the-art results that rival traditional methods originally designed by physicists. This highlights the exciting possibility of bringing insights from modern AI research to many-body physics.
Disorg
January 9, 2025
5:00 PM–6:00 PM
MC 5501
Come vote for your execs for the winter term