Seminar series
Date
Fri, 25 Apr 2008
Time
12:00 -
13:00
Location
L3
Speaker
Dr Maciej Dunajski
Organisation
Cambridge
Cover a plane with curves, one curve through each point
in each direction. How can you tell whether these curves are
the geodesics of some metric?
This problem gives rise to a certain closed system of partial
differential equations and hence to obstructions to finding such a
metric. It has been an open problem for at least 80 years. Surprisingly
it is harder in two dimensions than in higher dimensions. I shall present
a solution obtained jointly with Robert Bryant and Mike Eastwood.