Analysis Seminar

Speaker: Professor Jane Hawkins, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Title: Elliptic Functions, Lattices, and Dynamics

We give some connections between classical elliptic functions (doubly periodic meromorphic functions) and dynamical systems.  These functions give rise to interesting rational maps of the sphere as well as exhibit a wide range of dynamics when they are iterated.  We discuss dependence of the dynamics on the underlying period lattice and the important role played by a the lemniscate constant (a classical transcendental number).  The lecture will be largely self-contained with a fair amount of expository material, but will also include some recent work.