12:30 pm Tuesday, February 16, 2010
GADGET: Symplectic cohomology I by Tim Perutz (UT Austin - Mathematics) in RLM 8.136
This is the first of two expository talks on symplectic cohomology, an invariant of symplectic manifolds with contact boundary, constructed using the methods of Hamiltonian Floer cohomology. This theory emerged in the mid 90s as a device to prove cases of Weinstein's conjecture that every contact form has a periodic Reeb orbit. More recently, it has emerged as a striking invariant in its own right, not in general isomorphic to anything classical, and with strong connections to algebraic and analytic geometry (affine varieties, Stein manifolds), string topology, TQFT, symplectic field theory, and Fukaya categories. In the first talk, I'll set out the structure of the theory, and illustrate its use in measuring the differences - sometimes spectacular - between symplectic and smooth topology. Submitted by
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