April 14, 2016
Matthew Begue, Levi deValve, David Miller, and Benjamin Steinhurst
This group introduced a method of constructing a general Laakso space while calculating the spectrum and multiplicities of the Laplacian operator on it. Using this information, they found the leading term of the trace of the heat kernel of a Laakso space and its spectral dimension.
Shotaro Makisumi, Grace Stadnyk, and Benjamin Steinhurst
This group introduced the k-peg Hanoi automorphisms and Hanoi self-similar groups, a generalization of the Hanoi Towers groups, and gave conditions for them to be contractive. They analyzed the limit spaces of a particular family of contracting Hanoi groups, and showed that these are the unique maximal contracting Hanoi groups under a suitable symmetry condition. Finally, they provided partial results on the contraction of Hanoi groups with weaker symmetry.
arXiv.org
International Journal of Algebra and Computation (IJAC)
Kevin Romeo and Benjamin Steinhurst
This group analyzed the spectrum of a self-adjoint operator on a Laakso space using the projective limit construction originally given by Barlow and Evans. They used the hierarchical cell structure induced by the choice of approximating quantum graphs to calculate the spectrum with multiplicities. They then extended the method for using the hierarchical cell structure to more general projective limits beyond Laakso spaces.
Complex Variables and Elliptic Equations: An International Journal
arXiv.org
Daniel Ford and Benjamin Steinhurst
This group introduced a family of post-critically finite fractal trees indexed by the number of branches they possess. They then produced a Laplacian operator on graph approximations to these fractals and used spectral decimation to describe the spectrum of the Laplacian on these trees. Lastly they considered the behavior of the spectrum as the number of branches increases.
August 17, 2015
(photo courtesy Megan Brunner)
Mini-Symposium poster