Almost all drums sound awful

Eva-Maria Hekkelman (University of Bonn)

Thursday 1st October 15:00-16:00
Maths 311B

Abstract

Musical intervals which sound pleasant, consist of frequencies that are some rational multiple of one another. In recent work with Malte Leimbach and Oliver Fürst, we have shown that generically, the sound of a drum (i.e. the spectrum of the Laplace operator on a manifold) contains no such harmonies at all. This has implications for a recent physics-inspired research programme initiated by Connes and Van Suijlekom in Noncommutative Geometry. In my talk I'll explain the core idea of their work, and how our results relate to it.

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