PIMS-UBC Distinguished Lecture: Quantum Unique Ergodicity and Number Theory

• Date: 04/16/2010
Lecturer(s):
Kannan Soundararajan (Stanford University)
Location:

University of British Columbia

Description:

A fundamental problem in the area of quantum chaos is to understand the distribution of high eigenvalue eigenfunctions of the Laplacian on certain Riemannian manifolds. A particular case which is of interest to number theorists concerns hyperbolic manifolds arising as a quotient of the upper half-plane by a discrete arithmetic" subgroup of SL_2(R) (for example, SL_2(Z), and in this case the corresponding eigenfunctions are called Maass cusp forms). In this case, Rudnick and Sarnak have conjectured that the high energy eigenfunctions become equi-distributed. I will discuss some recent progress which has led to a resolution of this conjecture, and also on a holomorphic analog for classical modular forms. I will not assume any familiarity with these topics, and the talk should be accessible to graduate students.

Schedule:

3:00 - 4:00pm, MATH 100.