Richard Schoen: New perspectives on scalar curvature
Time: Wed 2019-09-18 15.15 - 17.00
Location: FR4, Oskar Klein, AlbaNova
Participating: Richard Schoen, UC Irvine
Schedule
14:00-15:00 Precolloquium by Bernando Fernandes in FB41 for master students and PhD students
15:15-16:15 Colloquium lecture by Richard Schoen in Room Oskar Klein, AlbaNova
16:15-16:30 SMC Excellent Theses Awards
16:30-17:00 SMC social get together with refreshments
Abstract
This will be a talk for a general audience explaining the dual role that the scalar curvature plays in differential geometry and in general relativity. Both subjects motivate questions about the geometric structure of spaces with scalar curvature bounded from below. We will describe some of these questions by analogy with similar questions for surfaces where the answers are largely known. In the physical case of dimension three we only have partial knowledge and many questions remain.