November 22, 2024, Webb Hall 1100

This talk will discuss some ongoing research into practical aspects of the behaviour of non-autonomous systems (i.e. dynamical systems where the rules of evolution that change with time). Although non autonomous systems are well studied, it remains hard to make general statements about attracting behaviour without limiting to a specific category. Such a category is the class of asymptotically autonomous systems, where there are autonomous past and future limits. Using the concepts of pullback attractor it is possible to use this to understand tipping effects. Particularly interesting consequences relate to predictability of ensembles in cases where the past limit attractor is chaotic, and a concept of a nonautonomous physical measure is needed.

Peter Ashwin is a Professor of Mathematics specializing in dynamical systems theory and computational modelling. He has been at Exeter since 2000, having previously held teaching and research positions at Surrey, Warwick, Nice (France) and Marburg (Germany). Since 2022 he is Director of Research and Impact within the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Exeter.