CSU HAYWARD
DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS AND
COMPUTER SCIENCE
COLLOQUIUM
Friday, February 27, 2004; Noon-1pm Sc N321
Speaker:
Ilie Ugarcovici, Pennsylvania State University
Candidate for Math Faculty Position
Chaotic Dynamics and Applications to Structured Population Models
The theory of dynamical systems studies the long-term behavior of evolutionary processes, trying to describe phenomena that are common to physical and biological systems throughout science. In the first part of my talk, I will illustrate some of the complicated dynamical behaviors encountered in a nonlinear density dependent population model: local and global bifurcations, period doubling cascades, attracting closed curves which bifurcate into strange attractors, multiple co-existing strange attractors with large basins of attraction.
In the second part of my talk, I will present some new qualitative properties of nonuniformly hyperbolic dynamical systems, i.e. systems with nonzero Lyapunov exponents. This class of systems exhibits complicated orbit structure attested by the exponential growth of the number of periodic orbits and sensitive dependence on initial conditions.
Please join us beforehand for pizza.