The Foias Lectures
Date: April 17, 2023
Time: 4:00PM - 5:00PM
Location: BLOC 117
Speaker: Gigliola Staffiliani, MIT
Title: The study of wave interactions: where beautiful mathematical ideas come together
Abstract: Phenomena involving interactions of waves happen at different scales and in different media: from
gravitational waves to the waves on the surface of the ocean, from our milk and coffee in the morning
to infinitesimal particles that behave like wave packets in quantum physics. These phenomena are
difficult to study in a rigorous mathematical manner, but maybe because of this challenge
mathematicians have developed interdisciplinary approaches that are powerful and beautiful.
In the first lecture, which will be colloquium style, I will describe some of these approaches and show
for example how the need to understand certain multilinear and periodic wave interactions provided
also the tools to prove a famous conjecture in number theory, or how classical tools in probability gave
the right framework to still have viable theories behind certain deterministic counterexamples.
In the second and third lecture I will open a small window into the concept of weak wave turbulence. I
will start with the deterministic approach of Bourgain, involving the study of long time asymptotic of
higher Sobolev norms of solutions of dispersive equations, and I will end with the rigorous derivation
of a 3-wave kinetic equation.