Counting orbit points (part 2): Patterson-Sullivan theory

Posted: Sun 05 January 2020
Filed under mathematics
Tags: geometry dynamics topology

In the previous post, we saw how to get an asymptotic count of orbit points under a lattice action, i.e. a finite covolume Fuchsian group. To do so, we needed the fact that the geodesic flow on the associated quotient was mixing with respect to the Liouville measure. That …

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Counting orbit points under group actions - Part 1

Posted: Sat 19 October 2019
Filed under mathematics
Tags: geometry dynamics topology

After 10 months of being unable to come up with anything interesting to post on the blog, I realized it might be a good idea use this blog to keep track of the math I've been working on. That way my blog can act as a public version of my …

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What is an "a priori estimate"?

Posted: Tue 18 December 2018
Filed under mathematics
Tags: analysis

One of the things a math major learns in their first proof based course is that one must prove existence of objects before going on to prove any properties about them. After a few years, this becomes almost second nature, and most pure mathematicians are wary of making claims about …

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The most overloaded word in math

Posted: Sun 14 October 2018
Filed under mathematics
Tags: nomenclature

Last Wednesday, the conversation in my office veered towards the words we hated the most in math. Not surprisingly, the list included the usual suspects like normal, simple, and regular. It's probably the same reason that these words also make it to the top five of this MathOverflow post. These …

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An algebraic definition of the cotangent space

Posted: Sat 30 June 2018
Filed under mathematics
Tags: differential-geometry algebraic-geometry

I'm almost a week into the algebraic geometry workshop now, and I've learnt a lot. I've learnt a few things about varieties, and also a bit of commutative algebra, but the most important takeaway for me from the first week was the sheaf theoretic way of looking at smooth manifolds …

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Summer 2018 update

Posted: Sat 02 June 2018
Filed under personal
Tags: personal

I'm getting lazy. I thought I would be posting more often once the summer holidays started but May came and went with nary a post. In my defence, I was fairly busy, dealing with the usual bureaucratic nonsense that comes with leaving your institution for good and moving to another …

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