Geometry Topology And Dynamics Of Character Varieties

This volume is based on lectures given at the highly successful three-week Summer School on Geometry, Topology and Dynamics of Character Varieties held at the National University of Singapore's Institute for Mathematical Sciences in July 2010. Aimed at graduate students in the early stages of research, the edited and refereed articles comprise an excellent introduction to the subject of the program, much of which is otherwise available only in specialized texts. Topics include hyperbolic structures on surfaces and their degenerations, applications of ping-pong lemmas in various contexts, introductions to Lorenzian and complex hyperbolic geometry, and representation varieties of surface groups into PSL(2, ℝ) and other semi-simple Lie groups. This volume will serve as a useful portal to students and researchers in a vibrant and multi-faceted area of mathematics. Sample Chapter(s) Foreword (72 KB) Chapter 1: An Invitation to Elementary Hyperbolic Geometry (708 KB) Contents:An Invitation to Elementary Hyperbolic Geometry (Ying Zhang)Hyperbolic Structures on Surfaces (Javier Aramayona)Degenerations of Hyperbolic Structures on Surfaces (Christopher J Leininger)Ping-Pong Lemmas with Applications to Geometry and Topology (Thomas Koberda)Creating Software for Visualizing Kleinian Groups (Yasushi Yamashita)Traces in Complex Hyperbolic Geometry (John R Parker)Lorentzian Geometry (Todd A Drumm)Connected Components of PGL(2,R)-Representation Spaces of Non-Orientable Surfaces (Frédéric Palesi)Rigidity and Flexibility of Surface Groups in Semisimple Lie Groups (Inkang Kim)Abelian and Non-Abelian Cohomology (Eugene Z Xia) Readership: Graduate students, researchers and professors in mathematical areas such as low-dimensional topology, dynamical systems and hyperbolic geometry. Keywords:Character Varieties;Representation Spaces;Mapping Class Groups;Hyperbolic Geometry;Kleinian GroupsKey Features:Accessible introduction to structures on surfaces, measured foliations and the Thurston compactification of Teichmüller spaceHow to write a python program to draw limit sets and other geometric objects associated with simple Kleinian groupsTwo excellent expository articles by students who attended the program

This volume contains the proceedings of the ICTS Program: Groups, Geometry and Dynamics, held December 3-16, 2012, at CEMS, Almora, India. The activity was an academic tribute to Ravi S. Kulkarni on his turning seventy. Articles included in this volume, both introductory and advanced surveys, represent the broad area of geometry that encompasses a large portion of group theory (finite or otherwise) and dynamics in its proximity. These areas have been influenced by Kulkarni's ideas and are closely related to his work and contribution.

This volume presents the lecture notes from the authors’ three summer courses offered during the program “Automorphisms of Free Groups: Geometry, Topology, and Dynamics,” held at the Centre de Recerca Matemàtica (CRM) in Bellaterra, Spain. The first two chapters present the basic tools needed, from formal language theory (regular and context-free languages, automata, rewriting systems, transducers, etc) and emphasize their connections to group theory, mostly relating to free and virtually-free groups. The material covered is sufficient to present full proofs of many of the existing interesting characterizations of virtually-free groups. In turn, the last chapter comprehensively describes Bonahon’s construction of Thurston’s compactification of Teichmüller space in terms of geodesic currents on surfaces. It also includes several intriguing extensions of the notion of geodesic current to various other, more general settings.

Alexander Reznikov (1960-2003) was a brilliant and highly original mathematician. This book presents 18 articles by prominent mathematicians and is dedicated to his memory. In addition it contains an influential, so far unpublished manuscript by Reznikov of book length. The book further provides an extensive survey on Kleinian groups in higher dimensions and some articles centering on Reznikov as a person.

This volume contains three expanded lecture notes from the program Scalar Curvature in Manifold Topology and Conformal Geometry that was held at the Institute for Mathematical Sciences from 1 November to 31 December 2014. The first chapter surveys the recent developments on the fourth-order equations with negative exponent from geometric points of view such as positive mass theorem and uniqueness results. The next chapter deals with the recent important progress on several conjectures such as the existence of non-flat smooth hyper-surfaces and Serrin's over-determined problem. And the final chapter induces a new technique to handle the equation with critical index and the sign change coefficient as well as the negative index term. These topics will be of interest to those studying conformal geometry and geometric partial differential equations. Contents:Lectures on the Fourth-Order Q Curvature Equation (Fengbo Hang and Paul C Yang)An Introduction to the Finite and Infinite Dimensional Reduction Methods (Manuel del Pino and Juncheng Wei)Einstein Constraint Equations on Riemannian Manifolds (Quôc Anh Ngô) Readership: Advanced undergraduates, graduate students and researchers interested in the study of conformal geometry and geometric partial differential equations.

This volume is put together by the National Association of Mathematicians to commemorate its 50th anniversary. The articles in the book are based on lectures presented at several events at the Joint Mathematics Meeting held from January 16–19, 2019, in Baltimore, Maryland, including the Claytor-Woodard Lecture as well as the NAM David Harold Blackwell Lecture, which was held on August 2, 2019, in Cincinnati, Ohio.

We introduce a geometric transition between two homogeneous three-dimensional geometries: hyperbolic geometry and anti de Sitter (AdS) geometry. Given a path of three-dimensional hyperbolic structures that collapse down onto a hyperbolic plane, we describe a method for constructing a natural continuation of this path into AdS structures. In particular, when hyperbolic cone manifolds collapse, the AdS manifolds generated on the "other side" of the transition have tachyon singularities. The method involves the study of a new transitional geometry called half-pipe geometry. We also discuss combinatorial/algebraic tools for constructing transitions using ideal tetrahedra. Using these tools we prove that transitions can always be constructed when the underlying manifold is a punctured torus bundle.

This book constitutes the second volume of interviews with prominent mathematicians and mathematical scientists who visited the Institute for Mathematical Sciences, National University of Singapore. First published in the Institute's newsletter Imprints during the period 2010-2020, they offer glimpses of an esoteric universe as viewed and experienced by some of the leading and creative practitioners of the craft of mathematics.The topics covered in this volume are wide-ranging, running from pure mathematics (logic, number theory, algebraic geometry) to applied mathematics (mathematical modeling, fluid dynamics) through probability and statistics, mathematical physics, theoretical computer science and financial mathematics. This eclectic mix of the abstract and the concrete should interest those who are enthralled by the mystique and power of mathematics, whether they are students, researchers or the non-specialists.By briefly tracing the paths traveled by the pioneers of different national backgrounds, the interviews attempt to put a cultural face to an intellectual endeavor that is often perceived as dry and austere by the uninitiated. They should also interest those who are intrigued by the influence of the environment on the creative spirit, and, in particular, those who are interested in the psychology and history of ideas.