UM Math Graduate Students Seminar

Dr. Kwok-Kun Kwong
University of Miami

will present

Hearing the shape of a drum

Friday, October 11, 2013, 2:30pm
Ungar Building Room 402


Abstract:In 1966, Mark Kac posed the famous question: Can one hear the shape of a drum? Physically, this is the question of determing the shape of a region (drum) given the list of all overtones (i.e. spectrum) it can make. It turns out that the answer is no. However, one can actually hear the dimension and the volume of a drum, thanks to Weyl's asymptotic formula. I will explain Kac's problem and verify Weyl's formula in a simple example.

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