Graduate Student / Postdoc Seminar

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Geometric flows and topology

Speaker: Bruce Kleiner, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences

Location: Warren Weaver Hall 1302

Date: Friday, November 16, 2018, 1 p.m.

Synopsis:

A geometric flow is a nonlinear heat equation governing an evolving geometric object such as a curve, surface, or tensor field.  Geometric flows first arose as models for physical processes, but subsequently turned out to be very useful as model PDEs —  they form singularities which are complicated yet tractable —  also as tools for solving problems in different areas of mathematics and mathematical physics.  The lecture will focus on applications to topology, specifically to the proof of some famous conjectures in topology that had eluded other methods.