Veranstaltung

Vortrag
Meanders, or how to count Jordan curves
PD Dr. Stefan Liebscher (FU Berlin)
14.4.2015, 17:00 Uhr – 18:00 Uhr

Meanders are the configurations which arise when one or several disjoint closed Jordan curves in the plane transversely intersect a given line. They play a crucial role in the classification of global attractors of dissipative parabolic PDEs in one space dimension and have a reinterpretation as elements of Temperley-Lieb algebras and Cartesian billiards.
We will explore this correspondence and introduce alternative representations of meanders. This naturally leads to questions concerning closed formulae for the number of connected components of the meander, also related to the trace of a Temperley-Lieb element.
Depending on the point of view, there are negative and positive answers.