Research Directions In Symplectic And Contact Geometry And Topology

This book highlights a number of recent research advances in the field of symplectic and contact geometry and topology, and related areas in low-dimensional topology. This field has experienced significant and exciting growth in the past few decades, and this volume provides an accessible introduction into many active research problems in this area. The papers were written with a broad audience in mind so as to reach a wide range of mathematicians at various levels. Aside from teaching readers about developing research areas, this book will inspire researchers to ask further questions to continue to advance the field. The volume contains both original results and survey articles, presenting the results of collaborative research on a wide range of topics. These projects began at the Research Collaboration Conference for Women in Symplectic and Contact Geometry and Topology (WiSCon) in July 2019 at ICERM, Brown University. Each group of authors included female and nonbinary mathematicians at different career levels in mathematics and with varying areas of expertise. This paved the way for new connections between mathematicians at all career levels, spanning multiple continents, and resulted in the new collaborations and directions that are featured in this work.

The papers presented in this volume are written by participants of the ``Symplectic and Contact Topology, Quantum Cohomology, and Symplectic Field Theory'' symposium. The workshop was part of a semester-long joint venture of The Fields Institute in Toronto and the Centre de Recherches Mathematiques in Montreal. The twelve papers cover the following topics: Symplectic Topology, the interaction between symplectic and other geometric structures, and Differential Geometry and Topology. The Proceeding concludes with two papers that have a more algebraic character. One is related to the program of Homological Mirror Symmetry: the author defines a category of extended complex manifolds and studies its properties. The subject of the final paper is Non-commutative Symplectic Geometry, in particular the structure of the symplectomorphism group of a non-commutative complex plane. The in-depth articles make this book a useful reference for graduate students as well as research mathematicians.

This volume presents some of the lectures and research during the special programme held at the Newton Institute in 1994. The two parts each contain a mix of substantial expository articles and research papers that outline important and topical ideas. Many of the results have not been presented before, and the lectures on Floer homology is the first avaliable in book form.Symplectic methods are one of the most active areas of research in mathematics currently, and this volume will attract much attention.

Symplectic and contact geometry naturally emerged from the mathematical description of classical physics. The discovery of new rigidity phenomena and properties satisfied by these geometric structures launched a new research field worldwide. The intense activity of many European research groups in this field is reflected by the ESF Research Networking Programme "Contact And Symplectic Topology" (CAST). The lectures of the Summer School in Nantes (June 2011) and of the CAST Summer School in Budapest (July 2012) provide a nice panorama of many aspects of the present status of contact and symplectic topology. The notes of the minicourses offer a gentle introduction to topics which have developed in an amazing speed in the recent past. These topics include 3-dimensional and higher dimensional contact topology, Fukaya categories, asymptotically holomorphic methods in contact topology, bordered Floer homology, embedded contact homology, and flexibility results for Stein manifolds.

Symplectic geometry has its origins as a geometric language for classical mechanics. But it has recently exploded into an independent field interconnected with many other areas of mathematics and physics. The goal of the IAS/Park City Mathematics Institute Graduate Summer School on Symplectic Geometry and Topology was to give an intensive introduction to these exciting areas of current research. Included in this proceedings are lecture notes from the following courses: Introductionto Symplectic Topology by D. McDuff; Holomorphic Curves and Dynamics in Dimension Three by H. Hofer; An Introduction to the Seiberg-Witten Equations on Symplectic Manifolds by C. Taubes; Lectures on Floer Homology by D. Salamon; A Tutorial on Quantum Cohomology by A. Givental; Euler Characteristicsand Lagrangian Intersections by R. MacPherson; Hamiltonian Group Actions and Symplectic Reduction by L. Jeffrey; and Mechanics: Symmetry and Dynamics by J. Marsden. Information for our distributors: Titles in this series are copublished with the Institute for Advanced Study/Park City Mathematics Institute. Members of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) receive a 20% discount from list price.

This text on contact topology is a comprehensive introduction to the subject, including recent striking applications in geometric and differential topology: Eliashberg's proof of Cerf's theorem via the classification of tight contact structures on the 3-sphere, and the Kronheimer-Mrowka proof of property P for knots via symplectic fillings of contact 3-manifolds. Starting with the basic differential topology of contact manifolds, all aspects of 3-dimensional contact manifolds are treated in this book. One notable feature is a detailed exposition of Eliashberg's classification of overtwisted contact structures. Later chapters also deal with higher-dimensional contact topology. Here the focus is on contact surgery, but other constructions of contact manifolds are described, such as open books or fibre connected sums. This book serves both as a self-contained introduction to the subject for advanced graduate students and as a reference for researchers.

The goal of these notes is to provide a fast introduction to symplectic geometry for graduate students with some knowledge of differential geometry, de Rham theory and classical Lie groups. This text addresses symplectomorphisms, local forms, contact manifolds, compatible almost complex structures, Kaehler manifolds, hamiltonian mechanics, moment maps, symplectic reduction and symplectic toric manifolds. It contains guided problems, called homework, designed to complement the exposition or extend the reader's understanding. There are by now excellent references on symplectic geometry, a subset of which is in the bibliography of this book. However, the most efficient introduction to a subject is often a short elementary treatment, and these notes attempt to serve that purpose. This text provides a taste of areas of current research and will prepare the reader to explore recent papers and extensive books on symplectic geometry where the pace is much faster. For this reprint numerous corrections and clarifications have been made, and the layout has been improved.