Centre for Mathematics, University of Coimbra

Seminars

Linear chaos - from an apparent paradox to an ubiquitous phenomenon

2025-12-15

Speaker: Karl Grosse-Erdmann (Université de Mons, Belgium)

An AI-enhanced search via google reveals that "Chaos is a nonlinear phenomenon because it describes how complex, often unpredictable, behavior arises from simple deterministic rules in a system." In this talk we illustrate each part of this statement - with one exception: a system need not...

Free boundary regularity for the obstacle problem

2026-01-20

Speaker: Alessio Figalli (Fields Medal, ETH Zurich, Switzerland)

The classical obstacle problem consists of finding the equilibrium position of an elastic membrane whose boundary is held fixed and constrained to lie above a given obstacle. By classical results of Caffarelli, the free boundary is smooth outside a set of singular points. However, explicit...

The dynamics of viscous vortex filaments and the binormal curvature flow

2026-02-02

Speaker: Luis Vega (UPV/EHU & BCAM, Spain)

I'll present some recent work about the connection of vortex filaments/tubes that move according to Navier Stokes Equation and the binormal curvature flow of curves in 3d. This is a joint work with Mikel Ispizua and Marco A. Fontelos....

The Value of Errors in Proofs (a fascinating journey from Turing's 1936 R \(\neq\) RE to the 2020 breakthrough of MIP* = RE)

2026-03-01

Speaker: Avi Wigderson (Abel Prize, Turing Award, IMU Abacus Medal, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton Univ., USA)

In 2020, a group of theoretical computer scientists posted a paper on the Arxiv with the strange-looking title "MIP* = RE", impacting and surprising not only computational complexity theory but also some areas of math and physics. Specifically, it resolved, in the negative, the "Connes'...

Partial regularity in nonlocal problems

2026-04-16

Speaker: Giuseppe Mingione (Università di Parma, Italy)

The theory of partial regular regularity for elliptic systems replaces the classical De Giorgi-Nash-Moser one for scalar equations asserting that solutions are regular outside a negligible closed subset called the singular set. Eventually, Hausdorff dimension estimates on such a set can be...