Deformations of periodic frameworks

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Ciprian Borcea, Rider University
Fine Hall 214

A d-periodic bar-and-joint framework is an abstraction (and generalization to arbitrary dimension d) of an atom-and-bond crystal structure. We describe a deformation theory for this type of frameworks and various extensions to volume or symplectic analogues. Questions of generic rigidity highlight the role of sparsity conditions on the underlying quotient graph. This is joint work with Ileana Streinu, Smith College.