Spring 2006, MATH 662 (section 602)

Diophantine Approximations and Geometry of Numbers

Instructor:              Lenny Fukshansky
Time and Place:    T Th 3:55-5:10 pm, Blocker 155
Office:                   Milner 209
Office hours:         By appointment
Phone:                   (979) 845 - 7797
Email:                    lenny@math.tamu.edu
Class webpage:      http://www.math.tamu.edu/~lenny/m662_spring2006.html


Handouts

Course Description: PDF
Lecture notes (last updated: 4/18/06):  PDF

Student presentations

 Each presentation is 35 minutes

Tuesday, April 25:    Valentina Vega                     An overview of sphere packing, covering, and kissing number problems
                                   Jenny Gilmore                      Lattice packing construction coming from curves over finite fields

Thursday, April 27:   Dakota Blair                          LLL and the shortest vector problem
                                   Theodoros Kyriopoulos        On Erhart's polynomial

Friday, April 28:        Brad Lutes                             The Thue equation
                                   Chieh-Yu Chang                   An overview of some  transcendence results


Course policies

There will be no tests or collected homeworks; I will, however, suggest some homework exercises, which I will be happy to discuss with anyone interested. I do not schedule formal office hours, but plan to be available most of the time for students to either drop by my office or schedule an appointment; the best days for me are T W Th. Attendance in this course is crucial. Students will be given an opportunity to prepare presentations on a topic of their choice related to the class material to be given towards the end of the semester; I will be happy to either suggest a topic for such a presentation, or discuss students' potential interests. No text is required, but I plan to post lecture notes on this webpage as we progress.

Announcements

 There will be no class on Thursday, 4/20/06. Instead, there will be a class meeting on
Friday, 4/28/06, 11:15 am - 12:30 pm in Milner 216.

There will be no class on Thursday, 3/9/06. Instead, there will be a class meeting on
Monday, 3/6/06, 4:30 - 5:45 pm in Milner 313.

There will be no class on Tuesday, 2/28/06. Instead, there will be a class meeting on
Friday, 3/3/06, 1:45 - 3:00 pm in Milner 313.

I will be out of town for two weeks (1/27 - 2/12), so there will be no class on 1/31, 2/2, 2/7, and 2/9.
Instead, there will be class meetings on Wednesdays, 1/18, 1/25, 2/15, and 2/22 at 5:00 pm in Milner 313.

All printed handouts and web-materials are protected by US Copyright Laws. No multiple copies can be made without written permission by the instructor.