Activities This Week

Planar algebras are a type of diagrammatic graded algebra, introduced to axiomatize the standard invariant of subfactors. The fundamental example is the Temperley-Lieb algebra which can be constructed as End(X^n), where X is a quantum sl_2 module. Recently, there has been interest in a finite dimensional version of quantum sl_2, known as restricted quantum sl_2, and it has been conjectured that its representation theory is equivalent to a logarithmic conformal field theory. We aim to generalize the Temperley-Lieb construction to the restricted case, giving generators and relations of the planar algebra, and describing morphisms between indecomposable modules diagrammatically.

Let $x \to x+ \alpha$ be a rotation on the circle and let $\varphi$ be a function with bounded variation. Denote by $S_n(\varphi, x) := \sum_{j=0}^{n-1} \varphi(x+j \alpha)$ the ergodic sums.

For a large class of $\alpha$’s including irrationals with bounded partial quotients, we show decorrelation inequalities between the ergodic sums at time $q_k$, where the $q_k$’s are the denominators of $\alpha$.

This allows to study the asymptotic distribution of the ergodic sums $S_n(\varphi, x)$ after normalization, in particular for some step functions, along subsequences.

We will give also an application to a geometric model, the billiard flow in the plane with periodic rectangular obstacles when the flow is restricted to special directions.

The family of high rank arithmetic groups is class of groups which is playing an important role in various areas of mathematics. It includes SL(n,Z), for n>2 , SL(n, Z[1/p] ) for n>1, their finite index subgroups and many more. A number of remarkable results about them have been proven including; Mostow rigidity, Margulis Super rigidity and the Quasi-isometric rigidity. We will talk about a new type of rigidity : “first order rigidity”. Namely if D is such a non-uniform characteristic zero arithmetic group and E a finitely generated group which is elementary equivalent to it ( i.e., the same first order theory in the sense of model theory) then E is isomorphic to D. This stands in contrast with Zlil Sela’s remarkable work which implies that the free groups, surface groups and hyperbolic groups ( many of which are low-rank arithmetic groups) have many non isomorphic finitely generated groups which are elementary equivalent to them. Joint work with Nir Avni and Chen Meiri.