Colloquium: "Asymptotic Geometry and Continuous Spectrum"

Nigel Higson, Pennsylvania State University

Abstract: Early in his career, Hermann Weyl studied and solved the problem of decomposing a function on a half-line as a continuous combination of the eigenfunctions of a Sturm-Liouville operator with asymptotically constant coefficients.  Weyl's theorem served as inspiration for Harish-Chandra in his pursuit of the Plancherel formula for semisimple groups, and for this reason it continues to be of interest.  I'll try to explain the (noncommutative) geometry behind Weyl's theorem and behind the extensions studied by Harish-Chandra. This is joint work with Tyrone Crisp and Qijun Tan.

Host: Xiang Tang

Tea @ 3:45pm in room 200