Wave Localization and the Hidden Structure of Disorder

Wednesday Apr 30, 2025, 6:00 PM → 7:00 PM America/New_York

Gerald D. Fischbach Auditorium/2-GDFA (160 5th Ave)

Wave Localization and the Hidden Structure of Disorder 

Contact: plund@simonsfoundation.org; lectures@simonsfoundation.org

Registration link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/from-quarks-to-nuclei-computing-the-structure-of-matter-tickets-1270755767709https://www.eventbrite.com/e/wave-localization-and-the-hidden-structure-of-disorder-tickets-1306833757949?

Please note that all staff are expected to register for public events. Registration for Presidential Lectures closes at 2:00 pm on the day of the lecture. Additionally, staff are expected to check in with security in the lobby of 160 5th Ave before proceeding to the Gerald D. Fischbach Auditorium.

As you go down to the nanometer scale, matter increasingly reveals its wavelike nature. The control of these waves is revolutionizing fields from cryptography to quantum computing to power-efficient LED lighting. At these scales, even the slightest disorder or irregularity can trigger one of the most puzzling and ill-understood phenomena: wave localization.

In this Presidential Lecture, Svitlana Mayboroda will discuss wave localization, an astonishing ability of physical systems to maintain vibrations in a small portion of the original domain, preventing extended propagation. This effect happens with all sorts of waves, including visible light, Wi-Fi signals, sound waves and even matter itself. Mayboroda will explore the intricate nature of this phenomenon, the perplexing rules of confinement, the geometry perceived by the human eye and the very different geometries that guide the propagation of waves and the formation of free boundaries.

 

Mayboroda is a professor of mathematics at ETH Zurich, a McKnight Presidential Professor at the University of Minnesota, and the director of the Simons Collaboration on Localization of Waves. Her work lies at the interface between partial differential equations, analysis and geometric measure theory. Her discoveries have led to a wide range of applications in condensed matter physics, cold atom systems and the research and engineering of organic and nonorganic semiconductor materials and devices. She is a recipient of the U.S. Blavatnik National Award in Physical Sciences and Engineering, the Stein Prize for New Perspectives in Analysis and the AWM-Sadosky Prize in Analysis. She is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and the German Academy of Sciences. In 2018, she was an invited sectional speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians.

 

SCHEDULE

Doors open: 5:30 p.m. (No entrance before 5:30 p.m.)
Lecture: 6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. (Admittance closes at 6:20 p.m.)
Inquiries: lectures@simonsfoundation.org