Szego Seminar: "Filling problems in Contact and Symplectic Geometry"

Abstract: Contact and symplectic geometry grew out of classical mechanics and is now a thriving field of study in mathematics. They have important connections with low dimensional topology and have inspired several extraordinary and beautiful ideas, especially starting with the work of Gromov, Eliashberg, and McDuff in the 1980s. In my talk, I will introduce these topics from the mechanics perspective and delve into a natural class of problems associated with them, namely "symplectic filling problems". I will motivate why these problems are interesting and talk about work done on them and techniques inspired by them. A preliminary knowledge of differential geometry will be helpful, but not necessary.

Host: Nathan Wagner