The thematic session is devoted to variational methods as they appear in need of mathematical theory, optimization and numerical algorithms, engineering sciences. Variational techniques are highly useful in forward as well as inverse PDE problems to take into account nonlinearities which appear due to modeling plenty of phenomena.
Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
non-linearity, non-smoothness, non-convexity, dual and entropy approaches, control, shape and topology optimization, structure design, fracture or non-destructive testing, inverse scattering, electro-kinetics, photo-voltaic, micro-biological and bacteria issues, contact interaction, plasticity, granular, Cosserat and other dissipative physics.
Abstract variational theories as well as numerical simulations and various applications in mechanical, physical, geological, and bio-medical sciences are welcomed.

The main goal of this section is to bring together the experts actively working on Toeplitz operators acting on Bergman, Fock, or Hardy spaces, as well as in various related areas where Toeplitz operators play an essential role, such as asymptotic linear algebra, quantization, approximation, wavelets and time-frequency analysis, singular integral and convolution type operators.

One way of investigating operators in Hilbert space is to consider them as members of algebraic structures like spaces, algebras or semigroups. This allows to extract common features of the operators while considering them inside an abstract scheme.
On the other hand, the presence of analytic structure within the space provides more tools extends substantially the scope. The proposed subject includes both means separately as well as a join of them.
Among traditional examples of the latter one finds shift operators of any kind, Toeplitz and Hankel operators or composition ones, as to mention some possibilities. The list of examples can be extended much beyond this. Needless to say that unbounded operators fit well into this scheme, and this allows to take advantage of rich source of applications in Classical and Quantum Mechanics extending those already located in Pure and Applied Mathematics.

The thematic session is devoted to various problems in the theory of perturbations of linear operators. Topics include, but not limited to:
1. Behaviour of functions of operators under perturbations of operators;
2. Perturbations of functions of several commuting operators;
3. Perturbations of functions of noncommuting operators;
4. Trace formulae.

Moment problems have been both at the heart and at the crossroads of numerous disciplines in pure and applied mathematics since their first appearance in the work of Stieltjes more than a century ago. They certainly occupy a prominent position in the field of operator theory and its applications. While Haviland’s Theorem (1935) related the solvability of a multidimensional moment problem to positive polynomials, it was only in the last two decades that moment problems came to play an important role in the field of real algebraic geometry, that grew largely out of Hilbert’s 17th problem on representing a positive real rational function as a sum of squares of real rational functions. The purpose of this thematic session is to bring together specialists in these two fields, both those that are traditional members of the IWOTA community and newcomers.

Functions of free noncommuting variables were first considered by Joseph L. Taylor in his monumental work on noncommutative spectral theory in the 1970s. They became a topic of active research in the last several years, as a fertile ground for considering the analogues of many problems of classical analysis in several complex variables and related problems in multivariable operator theory,
and as an important tool in free probability and free noncommutative algebraic and semialgebraic geometry and convexity.
The purpose of this thematic session is to give a venue for presenting some recent results in this rapidly developing area of operator theory and its applications.

 

On March 2 of this year Leiba Rodman, vice president and long time member of the IWOTA Steering Committee, passed away. At IWOTA 2014 we celebrated his 65th birthday with an emphasis on his outstanding mathematical work. In the present memorial session we will remember Leiba as a wonderful human being, a great friend, an excellent co-author, and a dear colleague.
Speakers:
Rien Kaashoek (chair)
Joe Ball
Ilya Spitkovsky
Andre Ran