Colloquium avec pour orateur Jean-Pierre Eckmann de l’Université de Genève, le lundi 2 juin à 11h à l’amphi Claudine Hermann (anciennement D).

Titre : Rolling stones reveal new structures in SO(3)

Résumé : This project started with the question whether one can construct a specially formed stone so that it rolls along a prescribed curve and its repetitions. We then discovered that for almost all given paths this is indeed possible, but, astonishingly, one needs to traverse two copies of the prescribed line to regain the original orientation of the stone. We finally discovered how this result is related to stochastic and Diophantine properties of rotations in SO(3) and SU(2).(This is work with Tsvi Tlusty and Yaroslav Sobolev).