Date:	Thu, December 3, 2009
Time:	11:30
Place:	Research I Seminar Room

Abstract: The joint spectral radius of a finite set of matrices is defined to be the largest possible exponential growth rate achieved by long products of matrices drawn from that set. Questions concerning the joint spectral radius arise naturally in a number of areas including the theory of control and stability, wavelet regularity, coding theory, and combinatorics. We apply ideas from multiplicative ergodic theory to give a rapidly-converging lower estimate for the joint spectral radius of a finite set of matrices.