Shmuel Weinberger : Aspherical manifolds whose fundamental groups have center
- Geometry and Topology ( 106 Views )I will discuss a conjecture of Conner and Raymond that any aspherical manifold whose fundamental group has center possesses a circle action, and put it into the context of earlier work and conjectures of Borel and others.
Laura Starkston : Manipulating singularities of Weinstein skeleta
- Geometry and Topology ( 97 Views )Weinstein manifolds are an important class of symplectic manifolds with convex ends/boundary. These 2n dimensional manifolds come with a retraction onto a core n-dimensional stratified complex called the skeleton, which generally has singularities. The topology of the skeleton does not generally determine the smooth or symplectic structure of the 2n dimensional Weinstein manifold. However, if the singularities fall into a simple enough class (Nadlers arboreal singularities), the whole Weinstein manifold can be recovered just from the data of the n-dimensional complex. We discuss work in progress showing that every Weinstein manifold can be homotoped to have a skeleton with only arboreal singularities (focusing in low-dimensions). Then we will discuss some of the expectations and hopes for what might be done with these ideas in the future.
Gavin Ball : Quadratic closed G2-structures
- Geometry and Topology ( 138 Views )A closed G2-structure is a certain type of geometric structure on a 7-manifold M, given by a 'non-degenerate' closed 3-form. The local geometry of closed G2-structures is non-trivial, in contrast to the perhaps more familiar case of symplectic structures (where we instead have a non-degenerate closed 2-form). In particular, any closed G2-structure automatically induces a Riemannian metric on M. I will talk about a special class of closed G2-structures, those satisfying a further 'quadratic' condition. This is a second order PDE system first written down by Bryant that can be interpreted as a condition on the Ricci curvature of the induced metric. I will focus mainly on the case where the G2-structure is 'extremally Ricci-pinched', giving new examples and describing an unexpected relationship with maximal submanifolds in a certain negatively curved pseudo-Riemannian symmetric space.
Dan Rutherford : Cellular compuation of Legendrian contact homology in dimension 2.
- Geometry and Topology ( 97 Views )This is joint work with Mike Sullivan. We consider a Legendrian surface, $L$, in $R^5$ (or more generally in the 1-jet space of a surface). Such a Legendrian can be conveniently presented via its front projection which is a surface in $R^3$ that is immersed except for certain standard singularities. We associate a differential graded algebra (DGA) to $L$ by starting with a cellular decomposition of the base projection (to $R^2$) of $L$ that contains the projection of the singular set of $L$ in its 1-skeleton. A collection of generators is associated to each cell, and the differential is determined in a formulaic manner by the nature of the singular set above the boundary of a cell. Our motivation is to give a cellular computation of the Legendrian contact homology DGA of $L$. In this setting, the construction of Legendrian contact homology was carried out by Etnyre-Ekholm-Sullvan with the differential defined by counting holomorphic disks in $C^2$ with boundary on the Lagrangian projection of $L$. Equivalence of our DGA with LCH may be established using work of Ekholm on gradient flow trees. Time permitting, we will discuss constructions of augmentations of the cellular DGA from two parameter families of functions.
Luca Di Cerbo : Positivity in K\ahler-Einstein theory and hyperbolic geometry
- Geometry and Topology ( 109 Views )We characterize logarithmic pairs which admit K\"ahler-Einstein metrics with negative scalar curvature and small cone-edge singularities along a simple normal crossing divisor. We show that if such K\"ahler-Einstein metrics exist for all small cone-angles then they exist for all angles in a fixed range depending on the dimension only. Remarkably, the existence of such a uniform range can be used to derive many interesting results in hyperbolic geometry. We give effective bounds on the number of cusped complex hyperbolic manifolds with given upper bound on the volume. We estimate the number of ends of such manifolds in terms of their volume. Finally, we discuss the projective algebraicity of minimal compactifications (Siu-Yau) of finite volume complex hyperbolic manifolds.
Vera Vértesi : Knots in contact 3--manifolds
- Geometry and Topology ( 160 Views )In this talk I will give a purely combinatorial description of Knot Floer Homology for knots in the three-sphere (Manolescu-Ozsváth-Szabó-Thurston). In this homology there is a naturally associated invariant for transverse knots. This invariant gives a combinatorial but still an effective way to distinguish transverse knots (Ng-Ozsváth-Thurston). Moreover it leads to the construction of an infinite family of non-transversely simple knot-types (Vértesi).
Matt Kerr : Normal Functions over Locally Symmetric Varieties
- Geometry and Topology ( 121 Views )
An algebraic cycle homologous to zero on a variety leads to an extension of Hodge-theoretic data. In a variational context, the resulting section of a bundle of complex tori is called a normal function, and is used to study cycles modulo rational or algebraic equivalence.
The archetype for interesting normal functions arises from the Ceresa cycle, consisting of the difference of two copies of a curve in its Jacobian. The profound geometric consequences of its existence are evidenced in work of Nori, Hain and (most recently) Totaro. In contrast, a theorem of Green and Voisin demonstrates the *absence* of normal functions arising from cycles on very general projective hypersurfaces of large enough degree.
Inspired by recent work of Friedman-Laza on Hermitian variation of Hodge structure and Oort's conjecture on special subvarieties in the Torelli locus, R. Keast and I wondered about the existence of normal functions over etale neighborhoods of Shimura varieties. In this talk I will explain our classification of the cases where a Green-Voisin analogue does *not* hold, and where one expects interesting cycles (and generalized cycles) to occur. I will also give evidence that these predictions might be "sharp", and draw some geometric consequences.
Tobias Ekholm : Wrapped Floer cohomology and Legendrian surgery
- Geometry and Topology ( 93 Views )We first review the relation between wrapped Floer cohomology of co-core disks after Lagrangian handle attachment and the Legendrian DGA of the corresponding attaching spheres. Then we discuss a generalization of this result to the partially wrapped setting where the Legendrian dga should be enriched with loop space coefficients, and describe several cases when explicit calculations are possible via parallel copies or local coefficient systems. We also discuss applications of these ideas to the topology of Lagrangian fillings of Legendrian submanifolds. The talk reports on joint work with Y. Lekili.
Jason Parsley : Helicity, Configuration Spaces, & Characteristic Classes
- Geometry and Topology ( 174 Views )The helicity of a vector field in R^3, an analog to linking number, measures the extent to which its flowlines coil and wrap around one another. Helicity turns out to be invariant under volume-preserving diffeomorphisms that are isotopic to the identity. Motivated by Bott-Taubes integration, we provide a new proof of this invariance using configuration spaces. We then present a new topological explanation for helicity, as a characteristic class. Among other results, this point of view allows us to completely characterize the diffeomorphisms under which helicity is invariant and give an explicit formula for the change in helicity under a diffeomorphism under which helicity is not invariant. (joint work with Jason Cantarella, U. of Georgia)
Mark A. Stern : A coarse Cheeger inequality for 1-forms
- Geometry and Topology ( 126 Views )Motivated by questions about the spectral geometry of hyperbolic manifolds, arising in number theory, we seek a lower bound for the first nonzero eigenvalue of the Laplace Beltrami operator on 1-forms on hyperbolic manifolds. We prove an analog of Cheeger's inequality. Joint work with Michael Lipnowski.
Ralph Howard : Tangent cones and regularity of real hypersurfaces
- Geometry and Topology ( 115 Views )We characterize $C^1$ embedded hypersurfaces of $R^n$ as the only locally closed sets with continuously varying flat tangent cones whose measure-theoretic-multiplicity is at most $m < 3/2$. It follows any (topological) hypersurface which has flat tangent cones and is supported everywhere by balls of uniform radius is $C^1$. In the real analytic case the same conclusion holds under the weakened hypothesis that each tangent cone be a hypersurface. In particular, any convex real analytic hypersurface $X$ of $R^n$ is $C^1$. Furthermore, if $X$ is real algebraic, strictly convex, and unbounded then its projective closure is a $C^1$ hypersurface as well, which shows that $X$ is the graph of a function defined over an entire hyperplane. This is joint work with Mohammad Ghomi.
Christopher Cornwell : Polynomials, grid diagrams, and Legendrian knots in lens spaces
- Geometry and Topology ( 102 Views )We discuss a HOMFLY polynomial invariant for links in lens spaces. We then show how this polynomial is related to the contact invariants of Legendrian and transverse links in lens spaces having a certain tight contact structure. In fact, we generalize a result of Ng, casting Bennequin-type inequalities in such contact lens spaces into a general framework.
Vestislav Apostolov : Old and new trends in Bihermitian geometry
- Geometry and Topology ( 158 Views )A bihermitian structure is a Riemannian metric compatible with two distinct orthogonal complex structures. In the mathematical literature this notion appeared in 90's in the study of the curvature of conformal 4-manifolds. However, bihermitian metrics were already studied in the physics literature in the 80's, as a building bloc of what Gates, Hull and Rocek call `the target space for a (2,2) super-symmetric sigma model'. There has been a great deal of interest in bihermitian geometry more recently, motivated by its link with the notion of generalized Kaehler geometry, introduced by Gualtieri and Hitchin. In this talk I will explain some main features of 4-dimensional bihermitian manifolds, as developed in the 90's, and report on recent classification results that I obtained with M. Gualtieri and G. Dloussky.
Colleen Robles : The motivation behind this semesters working seminar on the Hwang-Mok program.
- Geometry and Topology ( 112 Views )I will give a brief introduction to Hwang and Mok's program to study the geometry of uniruled projective manifolds via their varieties of minimal rational tangents (VMRT). The working seminar is motivated by the idea that there may be an analogous program to study variations of Hodge structure via the characteristic varieties introduced by Sheng and Zuo. As evidence for the proposed program's viability I will show how characteristic varieties may be used to characterize the families of Calabi-Yau manifolds that solve Gross's geometric realization problem for Hermitian symmetric domains.
Mauro Maggioni : Parametrizations of manifolds via Laplacian eigenfunctions and heat kernels
- Geometry and Topology ( 97 Views )We present recent results that show that for any portion of a compact manifold that admits a bi-Lipschitz parametrization by a Euclidean ball one may find a well-chosen set of eigenfunctions of the Laplacian that gives a bi-Lipschitz parametrization almost as good as the best possible. A similar, and in some respect stronger result holds by replacing eigenfunctions with heat kernels. These constructions are motivated by applications to the analysis of the geometry of data sets embedded in high-dimensional spaces, that are assumed to lie on, or close to, a low-dimensional manifold. This is joint work with P.W. Jones and R. Schul.
Lisa Traynor : Legendrian Torus Links
- Geometry and Topology ( 144 Views )Legendrian torus knots were classified by Etnyre and Honda. In particular, for any smooth torus knot we know the mountain range that lists all of its Legendrian representatives. I will discuss the classification of Legendrian torus links. In this classification, a natural realization question arises: what n-tuples of points on the mountain range of a (p,q)-torus knot can occur in a Legendrian (np, nq)-torus link? Another part of the classification is to understand how many different ways an n-tuple on the mountain range can be realized as an ordered link. In particular, for Legendrian representatives of an (np,nq)-torus link is it possible to do invariant preserving permutations of the components? This is joint work with Jennifer Dalton and John Etnyre.
Robert Bryant : The affine Bonnet problem
- Geometry and Topology ( 243 Views )The classical Euclidean problem studied by Bonnet in the 19th century was to determine whether, and in how many ways, a Riemannian surface can be isometrically embedded into Euclidean 3-space so that its mean curvature is a prescribed function. He found that, generically, specifying a metric and mean curvature admitted no solution but that there are special cases in which, not only are there solutions, but there are even 1-parameter families of distinct (i.e., mutually noncongruent) solutions. Much later, these Bonnet surfaces were found to be intimately connected with integrable systems and Lax pairs. In this talk, I will consider the analogous problem in affine geometry: To determine whether, and in how many ways, a surface endowed with a Riemannian metric g and a function H can be immersed into affine 3-space in such a way that the induced Blaschke metric is g and the induced affine mean curvature is H. This affine problem is, in many ways, richer and more interesting than the corresponding Euclidean problem. I will classify the pairs (g,H) that display the greatest flexibility in their solution space and explain what is known about the (suspected) links with integrable systems and Lax pairs.
Catherine Searle : Torus actions, maximality, and non-negative curvature
- Geometry and Topology ( 149 Views )The classification of compact Riemannian manifolds with positive or non-negative sectional curvature is a long-standing problem in Riemannian geometry. One successful approach has been the introduction of symmetries, and an important first case to understand is that of continuous abelian symmetries. In recent work with Escher, we obtained an equivariant diffeomorphism classification of closed, simply-connected non-negatively curved Riemannian manifolds admitting an isotropy-maximal torus action, with implications for the Maximal Symmetry Rank Conjecture for non-negatively curved manifolds. I will discuss joint work with Escher and Dong, that builds on this work to extend the classification to those manifolds admitting an almost isotropy-maximal action.
Jonathan Hanselman : The cosmetic surgery conjecture and Heegaard Floer homology
- Geometry and Topology ( 154 Views )The cosmetic surgery conjecture states that no two surgeries on a given knot produce the same 3-manifold (up to orientation preserving diffeomorphism). Floer homology has proved to be a powerful tool for approaching this problem; I will survey partial results that are known and then show that these results can be improved significantly. If a knot in S^3 admits purely cosmetic surgeries, then the surgery slopes are +/- 2 or +/- 1/q, and for any given knot we can give an upper bound for q in terms of the Heegaard Floer thickness. In particular, for any knot there are at most finitely many potential pairs of cosmetic surgery slopes. With the aid of computer computation we show that the conjecture holds for all knots with at most 15 crossings.
Ákos Nagy : From instantons to vortices on spherically symmetric ALF manifolds
- Geometry and Topology ( 112 Views )Yang-Mills theory on Asymptotically Locally Flat (ALF) 4-manifolds has been intensely studied by geometers and physicists since the late 70's. The most important examples are R^3 x S^1, the (multi-)Taub-NUT spaces, and the Euclidean Schwarzschild manifold. In this talk, I will outline the correspondence between spherically symmetric Yang-Mills instantons and planar Abelian vortices (following the ideas of Witten, Taubes, and Garcia-Prada), and then apply this instanton-vortex duality to spherically symmetric ALF 4-manifolds. Finally, I will show how this construction can be used to describe the low energy instanton moduli spaces of the Euclidean Schwarzschild manifold, and its generalizations. This is a joint work with Gonçalo Oliveira (IMPA).
Bulent Tosun : Fillability of contact surgeries and Lagrangian discs
- Geometry and Topology ( 144 Views )It is well known that all contact 3-manifolds can be obtained from the standard contact structure on the 3-sphere by contact surgery on a Legendrian link. Hence, an interesting and much studied question asks what properties of a contact structure are preserved under various types of contact surgeries. The case for the negative contact surgeries is fairly well understood. In this talk, we will discuss some new results about positive contact surgeries and in particular completely characterize when contact (r) surgery is symplectically/Stein fillable for r in (0,1]. This is joint work with James Conway and John Etnyre.
Ioana Suvaina : ALE Ricci flat Kahler surfaces
- Geometry and Topology ( 119 Views )The talk presents an explicit classification of the ALE Ricci flat K\"ahler surfaces, generalizing previous classification results of Kronheimer. The manifolds are related to a special class of deformations of quotient singularities of type $\mathbb C^2/G$, with $G$ a finite subgroup of $U(2)$. I will also explain the relation with the Tian-Yau construction of complete Ricci flat Kahler manifolds.
Matthew Hedden : On Floer homology and knots admitting lens space surgeries
- Geometry and Topology ( 170 Views )J. Berge discovered a simple condition on a knot, K, in the three-sphere which ensures that Dehn surgery on K yields a lens space. It is an open conjecture, known as the Berge conjecture, that any knot on which one can perform surgery and obtain a lens space satisfies his condition. I will discuss a strategy, developed jointly with Ken Baker and Eli Grigsby by which the knot Floer homology invariants of Ozsvath, Szabo, and Rasmussen could be used to prove this conjecture.
Brian Krummel : Higher codimension relative isoperimetric inequality outside a convex set
- Geometry and Topology ( 204 Views )We consider an isoperimetric inequality for area minimizing submanifolds $R$ lying outside a convex body $K$ in $\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$. Here $R$ is an $(m+1)$-dimensional submanifold whose boundary consists of a submanifold $T$ in $\mathbb{R}^{n+1} \setminus K$ and a free boundary (possibly not rectifiable) along $\partial K$. An isoperimetric inequality outside a convex body was previously proven by Choe, Ghomi, and Ritore in the codimension one setting where $m = n$. We extend their result to higher codimension. A key aspect of the proof are estimates on the concentration of mass of $T$ and $R$ near $\partial K$.
Justin Sawon : Lagrangian fibrations by Jacobians of low genus curves
- Geometry and Topology ( 138 Views )The Beauville-Mukai integrable system is a well-known Lagrangian fibration, i.e., a holomorphic symplectic manifold fibred by Lagrangian complex tori. It is constructed by beginning with a complete linear system of curves on a K3 surface, and then taking the compactified relative Jacobian of the family of curves. One may ask whether other families of curves yield Lagrangian fibrations in this way. Markushevich showed that this is not the case in genus two: a Lagrangian fibration by Jacobians of genus two curves must be a Beauville-Mukai system. We generalize his result to genus three curves, and also to non-hyperelliptic curves of genus four and five.
Michael Eichmair : Non-variational Plateau problems and the spacetime positive mass theorem in general relativity
- Geometry and Topology ( 175 Views )In this talk I will introduce some new ideas to the existence theory for a class of non-variational existence problems arising naturally in geometry and analysis. I will discuss some applications (and potential applications) to positive mass-type and Penrose-type theorems in general relativity.
Gábor Székelyhidi : On the positive mass theorem for manifolds with corners.
- Geometry and Topology ( 98 Views )A problem originally studied by P. Miao is whether the positive mass theorem holds on manifolds with certain singularities along a hypersurface. I will discuss an approach to this problem which uses the Ricci flow to smooth out the metric, so that one can apply the usual positive mass theorem. This allows for extending the rigidity statement in the zero mass case to higher dimensions, which was only known in the 3 dimensional case previously. This is joint work with D. McFeron.