CARMA SEMINAR Speaker: Kevin Hare, University of Waterloo Title: An explicit counter-example to the Lagarias-Wang finiteness conjecture Location: Room V129, Mathematics Building (Callaghan Campus) The University of Newcastle Time and Date: 4:00 pm, Thu, 28th Feb 2013 Abstract: The joint spectral radius of a finite set of real $d \times d$ matrices is defined to be the maximum possible exponential rate of growth of long products of matrices drawn from that set. A set of matrices is said to have the finiteness property if there exists a periodic product which achieves this maximal rate of growth. J. C. Lagarias and Y. Wang conjectured in 1995 that every finite set of real $d \times d$ matrices satisfies the finiteness property. However, T. Bousch and J. Mairesse proved in 2002 that counterexamples to the finiteness conjecture exist, showing in particular that there exists a family of pairs of $2 \times 2$ matrices which contains a counterexample. Similar results were subsequently given by V. D. Blondel, J. Theys and A. A. Vladimirov and by V. S. Kozyakin, but no explicit counterexample to the finiteness conjecture was given. This talk will discuss an explicit counter-example to this conjecture. [Permanent link]