Title: Using optimization to solve some problems in
astrophysics
speaker: Robert Vanderbei
Abstract:
I will discuss two applications of nonlinear optimization. The first
involves finding new surprising orbits for the n-body problem by minimizing
the action functional. The second is the design of a telescope aperture
that provides the extreme high-contrast one needs in order to image
Earth-like planets orbiting nearby stars. The problem here is to maximize
light throughput subject to certain constraints on the Fourier transform
of the light transmission function.