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Number Theory Seminar

Analytic Number Theory and Optimal Transport: an interesting connection

Stefan Steinerberger (University of Washington)

Location:  Zoom Link: https://rutgers.zoom.us/j/95245984714?pwd=cXJXTldjUGpxdUk5WW9GMVhaREZ6UT09
Date & time: Tuesday, 15 September 2020 at 2:00PM - 3:00PM

Abstract: Optimal Transport studies the problem of how to move one measure to another so that the "transport cost" is minimal. Think of one measure being products in a warehouse and the other measure being how much people want to buy the product: the transport distance would then be the amount of miles trucks have to drive (weighted by how much they carry). I will start by giving a gentle Introduction to this topic, we do not actually need very much. My question then is: suppose one measure is the normalized counting measure in quadratic residues in a finite field and the other is the uniform measure, can the Transport be estimated? Or maybe Dirac measures placed in irrational rotations on the Torus: how cheap is it to transport them to the Lebesgue measure? And are these results interesting? (Spoiler: yes). And do they carry some useful meaning? (Spoiler: yes) Some recent advances in Optimal Transport allow these problems to be reduced to a simple exponential sum; basic ingredients from Analytic Number Theory can then be used to get new insight at relatively low technical cost. There are many, many open questions.


Zoom Password: rutgersnts

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