Mathematics and Statistics

Colloquium
Singular Differential Equations and the Stokes Groupoids

Brent Pym (McGill)

Thursday, September 5, 2013 at 3:30 pm

Tilley Hall Room 125

Solutions of ordinary differential equations typically behave quite badly near an irregular singular point, exhibiting essential singularities and divergent power series expansions. In recent work with Marco Gualtieri and Songhao Li, we use methods from differential and algebraic geometry particularly, the theory of Lie groupoids to construct spaces on which the fundamental solutions of singular differential equations are globally defined, analytic objects. These spaces then provide an elementary method for extracting actual solutions from the aforementioned divergent series. In this talk, I will give an overview of our construction and its applications.

Dr Pym is a Postdoctoral Fellow at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec