Title: The Continuum Limit of Theta Functions
Speaker: Fudong Wang (University of Central Florida)
Date/Time: Friday, October 15th, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Abstract: The purpose of the talk is to introduce Venakides’ 1989 CPAM XLII paper on the continuum limit of theta functions. The problem is closely related to the semiclassical limit (or small dispersion, or nonlinear WKB analysis) for the famous nonlinear PDE: Korteweg-de Vries equation. Theta function can be considered as high dimensional Fourier series. The continuum limit of theta function we will discuss is the limit when the size of the period matrix of the theta function goes infinite in a certain way (or one can say the genus of the corresponding Riemann surface goes infinite). And we will associate the leading behavior with a minimizing problem (variational problem).