Past Geometry and Analysis Seminar

Hitchin's equations are a system of gauge theoretic equations on a Riemann surface that are of interest in many areas including representation theory, Teichmüller theory, and the geometric Langlands correspondence. The Hitchin moduli space carries a natural hyperkähler metric.  An intricate conjectural description of its asymptotic structure appears in the work of Gaiotto-Moore-Neitzke and there has been a lot of progress on this recently.  I will discuss some recent results using tools coming out of geometric analysis which are well-suited for verifying these extremely delicate conjectures. This strategy often stretches the limits of what can currently be done via geometric analysis, and simultaneously leads to new insights into these conjectures.

Donaldson-Thomas theory associates integers (which are virtual counts of sheaves) to a Calabi-Yau threefold X. The simplest example is that of $\mathbb{C}^3$, when the Donaldson-Thomas (DT) invariant of sheaves of zero dimensional support and length d is $p(d)$, the number of plane partitions of $d$. The DT invariants have several refinements, for example a cohomological one, where instead of a DT invariant, one studies a graded vector space with Euler characteristic equal to the DT invariant. I will talk about two other refinements (categorical and K-theoretic) of DT invariants, focusing on the explicit case of $\mathbb{C}^3$. In particular, we show that the K-theoretic DT invariant for $d$ points on $\mathbb{C}^3$ also equals $p(d)$. This is joint work with Yukinobu Toda.

We consider the varifolds associated to phase transitions whose first variation of Allen-Cahn energy is $L^p$ integrable with respect to the energy measure. We can see that the Dirichlet and potential part of the energy are almost equidistributed. After passing to the phase field limit, one can obtain an integer rectifiable varifold with bounded $L^p$ mean curvature. This is joint work with Huy Nguyen.

It is well understood by works of Fukaya and Teleman that the Fukaya category of a symplectic reduction at a regular value of the moment map can be computed before taking the quotient as an equivariant Fukaya category. Informed by mirror calculations,  we will give a new geometric interpretation of the equivariant Fukaya category corresponding to a singular value of the moment map where the equivariance is traded with wrapping.

Joint work in progress with Ed Segal.

In this talk I'll discuss some applications of the mean curvature flow to self shrinkers in R^3 and R^4.

Glueing construction has been used extensively to construct solutions to nonlinear geometric PDEs. In this talk, I will focus on the glueing construction of solutions to Lagrangian mean curvature flow. Specifically, I will explain the construction of Lagrangian translating solitons by glueing a small special Lagrangian 'Lawlor neck' into the intersection point of suitably rotated Lagrangian Grim Reaper cylinders. I will also discuss an ongoing joint project with Chung-Jun Tsai and Albert Wood, where we investigate the construction of solutions to Lagrangian mean curvature flow with infinite time singularities.

According to the Yau-Tian-Donaldson conjecture, the existence of a constant scalar curvature Kähler (cscK) metric in the cohomology class of an ample line bundle $L$ on a compact complex manifold $X$ should be equivalent to an algebro-geometric "stability condition" satisfied by the pair $(X,L)$. The cscK metrics are the critical points of Mabuchi's $K$-energy functional $M$, defined on the space of Kähler potentials, and an important result of Chen-Cheng shows that cscK metrics exist iff $M$ satisfies a standard growth condition (coercivity/properness). Recently the speaker has shown that the $K$-energy is indeed proper if and only if the polarized manifold is stable. The stability condition is closely related to the classical notion of Hilbert-Mumford stability. The speaker will give a non-technical account of the many areas of mathematics that are involved in the proof. In particular, he hopes to discuss the surprising role played by arithmetic geometry ​in the spirit of Arakelov, Faltings, and Bismut-Gillet-Soule.

According to the Yau-Tian-Donaldson conjecture, the existence of a constant scalar curvature Kähler (cscK) metric in the cohomology class of an ample line bundle $L$ on a compact complex manifold $X$ should be equivalent to an algebro-geometric "stability condition" satisfied by the pair $(X,L)$. The cscK metrics are the critical points of Mabuchi's $K$-energy functional $M$, defined on the space of Kähler potentials, and an important result of Chen-Cheng shows that cscK metrics exist iff $M$ satisfies a standard growth condition (coercivity/properness). Recently the speaker has shown that the $K$-energy is indeed proper if and only if the polarized manifold is stable. The stability condition is closely related to the classical notion of Hilbert-Mumford stability. The speaker will give a non-technical account of the many areas of mathematics that are involved in the proof. In particular, he hopes to discuss the surprising role played by arithmetic geometry ​in the spirit of Arakelov, Faltings, and Bismut-Gillet-Soule.

First we recall the mirror symmetry identification of the coordinate ring of certain very stable upward flows in the Hitchin system and the Kirillov algebra for the minuscule representation of the Langlands dual group via the equivariant cohomology of the cominuscule flag variety (e.g. complex Grassmannian). In turn we discuss a conjectural extension of this picture to non-very stable upward flows in terms of a big commutative subalgebra of the Kirillov algebra, which also ringifies the equivariant intersection cohomology of the corresponding affine Schubert variety.

Associated to any smooth projective curve C is its degree d Jacobian variety, parametrising isomorphism classes of degree d line bundles on C. Letting the curve vary as well, one is led to the universal Jacobian stack. This stack admits several compactifications over the stack of marked stable curves $\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{g,n}$, depending on the choice of a stability condition. In this talk I will introduce these compactified universal Jacobians, and explain how their moduli spaces can be constructed using Geometric Invariant Theory (GIT). This talk is based on arXiv:2210.11457.

The moduli space M of stable bundles on a Riemann surface possesses a natural family of holomorphic trivector fields. The talk will introduce these objects with examples and then use them to gain information about the Hochschild cohomology of M.

I will present two new results. The first concerns minimal surfaces of the hyperbolic space and is a relation between their renormalised area (in the sense of Graham and Witten) and the length of their ideal boundary measured in different metrics of the conformal infinity. The second result concerns minimal submanifolds of the sphere and is a relation between their volume and antipodal-ness. Both results were obtained from the same framework, which involves new monotonicity theorems and a comparison principle for them. If time permits, I will discuss how to use these to answer questions about uniqueness and non-existence of minimal surfaces.

Over the last years, two different approaches to construct symmetry algebras acting on the cohomology of Nakajima quiver varieties have been developed. The first one, due to Maulik and Okounkov, exploits certain Lagrangian correspondences, called stable envelopes, to generate R-matrices for an arbitrary quiver and hence, via the RTT formalism, an algebra called Yangian. The second one realises the cohomology of Nakajima varieties as modules over the cohomological Hall algebra (CoHA) of the preprojective algebra of the quiver Q. It is widely expected that these two approaches are equivalent, and in particular that the Maulik-Okounkov Yangian coincides with the Drinfel’d double of the CoHA.

Motivated by this conjecture, in this talk I will show how to identify the stable envelopes themselves with the multiplication map of a subalgebra of the appropriate CoHA. 

As an application, I will introduce explicit inductive formulas for the stable envelopes and use them to produce integral solutions of the elliptic quantum Knizhnik–Zamolodchikov–Bernard (qKZB) difference equation associated to arbitrary quiver (ongoing project with G. Felder and K. Wang). Time permitting, I will also discuss connections with Cherkis bow varieties in relation to 3d Mirror symmetry (ongoing project with R. Rimanyi).

Donaldson-Thomas theory is classically defined for moduli spaces of sheaves over a Calabi-Yau threefold. Thanks to recent foundational work of Cao-Leung, Borisov-Joyce and Oh-Thomas, DT theory has been extended to Calabi-Yau 4-folds. We discuss how, in this context, one can define natural K-theoretic refinements of Donaldson-Thomas invariants (counting sheaves on Hilbert schemes) and Pandharipande-Thomas invariants (counting sheaves on moduli spaces of stable pairs) and how — conjecturally — they are related. Finally, we introduce an extension of DT invariants to Calabi-Yau 4-orbifolds, and propose a McKay-type correspondence, which we expect to be suitably interpreted as a wall-crossing phenomenon. Joint work (in progress) with Yalong Cao and Martijn Kool.

I will talk about homological enumerative invariants for vector bundles on algebraic curves. These invariants were defined by Joyce, and encode rich information about the moduli space of semistable vector bundles, such as its volume and intersection numbers, which were computed by Witten, Jeffrey and Kirwan in previous work. I will define a notion of regularization of divergent infinite sums, and I will express the invariants explicitly as such a divergent sum in a vertex algebra.

Shrinking Ricci solitons are Ricci flow solutions that self-similarly shrink under the flow. Their significance comes from the fact that finite-time Ricci flow singularities are typically modeled on gradient shrinking Ricci solitons. Here, we shall address a certain converse question, namely, “Given a complete, noncompact gradient shrinking Ricci soliton, does there exist a Ricci flow on a closed manifold that forms a finite-time singularity modeled on the given soliton?” We’ll discuss work that shows the answer is yes when the soliton is asymptotically conical. No symmetry or Kahler assumption is required, and so the proof involves an analysis of the Ricci flow as a nonlinear degenerate parabolic PDE system in its full complexity. We’ll also discuss applications to the (non-)uniqueness of weak Ricci flows through singularities.

Labourie proved that every Hitchin representation into PSL(n,R) gives rise to an equivariant minimal surface in the corresponding symmetric space. He conjectured that uniqueness holds as well (this was known for n=2,3), and explained that if true, then the Hitchin component admits a mapping class group equivariant parametrization as a holomorphic vector bundle over Teichmüller space.

In this talk, we will define Hitchin representations, Higgs bundles, and minimal surfaces, and give the background for the Labourie conjecture. We will then explain that the conjecture fails for n at least 4, and point to some future questions and conjectures.

We study the problem of determining when a compact group can be realized as the group of isometries of a norm on a finite dimensional real vector space.  This problem turns out to be difficult to solve in full generality, but we manage to understand the connected groups that arise as connected components of isometry groups. The classification we obtain is related to transitive actions on spheres (Borel, Montgomery-Samelson) on the one hand and to prehomogeneous spaces (Vinberg, Sato-Kimura) on the other. (joint work with Martin Liebeck, Assaf Naor and Aluna Rizzoli)

For geometric variational problems one often only has weak, rather than strong, compactness results and hence has to deal with the problem that sequences of (almost) critical points $u_j$ can converge to a limiting object with different topology.

A major challenge posed by such singular behaviour is that the seminal results of Simon on Lojasiewicz inequalities, which are one of the most powerful tools in the analysis of the energy spectrum of analytic energies and the corresponding gradient flows, are not applicable.

In this talk we present a method that allows us to prove Lojasiewicz inequalities in the singular setting of almost harmonic maps that converge to a simple bubble tree and explain how these results allow us to draw new conclusions about the energy spectrum of harmonic maps and the convergence of harmonic map flow for low energy maps from surfaces of positive genus into general analytic manifolds.

The introduction to the talk will review basics of $G_{2}$ geometry in seven dimensions, and associative and co-associative submanifolds. In one part of the talk we will explain how fibrations with co-associative fibres, near the “adiabatic limit” when the fibres are very small,  give insights into various questions about moduli spaces of $G_{2}$ structures and singularity formation. This part is mostly speculative. In the other part of the talk we discuss some analysis questions which enter when setting up the foundations of this adiabatic theory. These can be seen as codimension 2 analogues of free boundary problems and related questions have arisen in a number of areas of differential geometry recently.

I will describe joint work with Tyler Kelly and Ran Tessler. FJRW (Fan-Jarvis-Ruan-Witten) theory is an enumerative theory of quasi-homogeneous singularities, or alternatively, of Landau-Ginzburg models. It associates to a potential W:C^n -> C given by a quasi-homogeneous polynomial moduli spaces of (orbi-)curves of some genus and marked points along with some extra structure, and these moduli spaces carry virtual fundamental classes as constructed by Fan-Jarvis-Ruan. Here we specialize to the case W=x^r+y^s and construct an analogous enumerative theory for disks. We show that these open invariants provide perturbations of the potential W in such a way that mirror symmetry becomes manifest. Further, these invariants are dependent on certain choices of boundary conditions, but satisfy a beautiful wall-crossing formalism.

(Joint with Y. Lekili) If someone gives you a variety with a singular point, you can try and get some understanding of what the singularity looks like by taking its “link”, that is you take the boundary of a neighbourhood of the singular point. For example, the link of the complex plane curve with a cusp $y^2 = x^3$ is a trefoil knot in the 3-sphere. I want to talk about the links of a class of 3-fold singularities which come up in Mori theory: the compound Du Val (cDV) singularities. These links are 5-dimensional manifolds. It turns out that many cDV singularities have the same 5-manifold as their link, and to tell them apart you need to keep track of some extra structure (a contact structure). We use symplectic cohomology to distinguish the contact structures on many of these links.

The so called Drinfeld conjecture states that the complement to very stable bundles has pure codimension one in the moduli space of vector bundles. In this talk I will explain a constructive proof in rank three, and discuss if/how it generalises to wobbly fixed points of the nilpotent cone as defined by Hausel and Hitchin. This is joint work with Pauly (Nice).

For almost calibrated Lagrangian mean curvature flow it is known that all singularities are of Type II. To understand the finer structure of the singularities forming, it is thus necessary to understand the structure of general ancient solutions arising as potential limit flows at such singularities. We will discuss recent progress showing that ancient solutions with a blow-down a pair of static planes meeting along a 1-dimensional line are translators. This is joint work with J. Lotay and G. Szekelyhidi.

A loop of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms of a symplectic manifold $X$ defines, by clutching, a symplectic fibration over the two-sphere with fibre $X$.  We prove that the integral cohomology of the total space splits additively, answering a question of McDuff, and extending the rational cohomology analogue proved by Lalonde-McDuff-Polterovich in the late 1990’s. The proof uses a virtual fundamental class of moduli spaces of sections of the fibration in Morava K-theory. This talk reports on joint work with Mohammed Abouzaid and Mark McLean.