Events - April 2022

Shengda Hu, Wilfrid Laurier University

"Riemannian metrics and generalized geometry"

We will discuss some computations involving Riemannian metrics in the context of generalized geometry. We will try to illustrate various constructions involving metric connections and their curvatures.

MC 5403

Spiro Karigiannis, Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo

"Calibrated subbundles of $\mathbb R^7$"

Christopher Lang, Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo

"The Spectral Curve of a SU(2) Monopole (Part 2): Identifying Subbundles"

We will be following Hitchin's 1982 paper, Monopoles and Geodesics, continuing from the last talk. This time, we find two holomorphic subbundles of the holomorphic vector bundle from the previous talk and identify them. Time permitting, we will define the spectral curve and discuss its properties.

MC 5403

Aleksa Vujicic, Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo

"The Problem with Braid"

Braid is a puzzle game released in 2008 whose central mechanic revolves around time manipulation. The goal of any level is to manipulate different level elements so that you can reach the exit - but is this always possible to do? It turns out that answering this question in general is impossible to do, and we look at why this is the case.

This talk will be held jointly online and in person:

Dennis The, UiT The Arctic University of Norway

"Simply-transitive CR real hypersurfaces in C^3"

Holomorphically (locally) homogeneous CR real hypersurfaces M^3 in C^2 were classified by Elie Cartan in 1932. A folklore legend tells that an unpublished manuscript of Cartan also treated the next dimension M^5 in C^3 (in conjunction with his study of bounded homogeneous domains), but no paper or electronic document currently circulates.

Christian Schulz, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"A strong version of Cobham’s theorem"