Nonlinear analysis has played a prominent role in the recent developments in geometry and topology. The study of the Yang-Mills equation and its cousins gave rise to the Donaldson invariants and more recently, the Seiberg-Witten invariants. Those invariants have enabled us to prove a number of striking results for low dimensional manifolds, particularly, 4-manifolds. The theory of Gromov-Witten invariants was established by using solutions of the Cauchy-Riemann equation. These solutions are often refered as pseudo-holomorphic maps which are special minimal surfaces studied long in geometry. It is certainly not the end of applications of nonlinear partial differential equations to geometry. In this talk, we will discuss some recent progress on nonlinear partial differential equations in geometry. We will be selective, partly because of my own interest and partly because of recent applications of nonlinear equations. There are also talks in this ICM to cover some other topics of geometric analysis by R. Bartnik, B. Andrew, P. Li and X.X. Chen, etc.
In this article, we study a generalisation of the Seiberg-Witten equations, replacing the spinor representation with a hyperKahler manifold equipped with certain symmetries. Central to this is the construction of a (non-linear) Dirac operator acting on the sections of the non-linear fibre-bundle. For hyperKahler manifolds admitting a hyperKahler potential, we derive a transformation formula for the Dirac operator under the conformal change of metric on the base manifold. As an application, we show that when the hyperKahler manifold is of dimension four, then away from a singular set, the equat…
This paper is the the third part of a series of paper whose aim is to use of the framework of \emph{twisted spectral triples} to study conformal geometry from a noncommutive geometric viewpoint. In this paper we reformulate the inequality of Vafa-Witten \cite{VW:CMP84} in the setting of twisted spectral triples. This involves a notion of Poincaré duality for twisted spectral triples. Our main results have various consequences. In particular, we obtain a version in conformal geometry of the original inequality of Vafa-Witten, in the sense of an explicit control of the Vafa-Witten bound under co…
In the present text we discuss basic aspects of the Seiberg - Witten theory mainly focusing the attantion on some geometrical details which could make the introduction to the subject more illustrative. At the same time we list there natural problems arise in this framework mostly interesting to the author. This text could be regarded as additional remarks to any comlete course on the Seiberg - Witten invariants.
Motivated by the Landau-Ginzburg model, we study the Witten deformation on a noncompact manifold with bounded geometry, together with some tameness condition on the growth of the Morse function $f$ near infinity. We prove that the cohomology of the Witten deformation $d_{Tf}$ acting on the complex of smooth $L^2$ forms is isomorphic to the cohomology of Thom-Smale complex of $f$ as well as the relative cohomology of a certain pair $(M, U)$ for sufficiently large $T$. We establish an Agmon estimate for eigenforms of the Witten Laplacian which plays an essential role in identifying these cohomol…
We show that recently constructed invariants of 3-dimensional manifolds and of hyperkaehler manifolds (L.Rozansky and E.Witten, hep-th/9612216) come from characteristic classes of foliations and from Gelfand-Fuks cohomology. In particular, any symplectic foliation gives invariants of 3-manifolds. Our preprint has many intersections with the preprint alg-geom/9704009 by M.Kapranov.
In this note, by extending the arguments of Ling (Illinois J. Math. 51, 853-860, 2007) to Bakry-Emery geometry, we shall give lower bounds for the first nonzero eigenvalue of the Witten-Laplacian on compact Bakry-Emery manifolds in the case that the Bakry-Emery Ricci curvature has some negative lower bounds and the manifold has the symmetry that the minimum of the first eigenfunction is the negative of the maximum. Our estimate is optimal among those obtained by a self-contained method.
In this paper we define a new category of almost complex riemannian 4- manifolds and discuss some basic properties of such pseudo symplectic manifolds. Some motivation based on the Seiberg - Witten theory is imposed.
A 2008 general overview on Weil-Petersson geometry is offered. A preliminary plan for the subsequent CBMS lectures at Central Connecticut State University is included. Mirzakhani's solution of Witten-Kontsevich is not included - this work essentially requires its own lectures. Lectures on Mirzakhani's Witten-Kontsevich were given at the 2011 Park City Mathematics Institute. Research on WP geometry coming after 2008 includes the Brock-Masur-Minsky second paper, Asymptotics of WP geodesics II: bounded geometry and unbounded entropy; the Burns-Masur-Wilkinson, The WP geodesic flow is ergodic; and…
The Seiberg-Witten equations that have recently found important applications for four-dimensional geometry are the Euler-Lagrange equations for a functional involving a connection $A$ on a line bundle $L$ and a section $ϕ$ of another bundle $W^+$ constructed from $L$ and a spinor bundle on a given four-dimensional Riemannian manifold. We show the regularity of weak solutions and the Palais-Smale condition for this functional.
This is an expansion on my talk at the Geometry and Topology conference at McMaster University, May 2004. We outline a program to relate the Heegaard Floer homologies of Ozsvath-Szabo, and Seiberg-Witten-Floer homologies as defined by Kronheimer-Mrowka. The center-piece of this program is the construction of an intermediate version of Floer theory, which exhibits characteristics of both theories.
The quantum cohomology algebra of the (full) flag manifold is a fundamental example in quantum cohomology theory, with connections to combinatorics, algebraic geometry, and integrable systems. Using a differential geometric approach, we give an algorithm for computing the multiplicative structure constants of this algebra (the 3-point genus zero Gromov-Witten invariants). The algorithm involves a Grobner basis calculation and the solution by quadrature of a system of differential equations. In particular we obtain quantum Schubert polynomials in a natural fashion.
In the symplectic category there is a `connect sum' operation that glues symplectic manifolds by identifying neighborhoods of embedded codimension two submanifolds. This paper establishes a formula for the Gromov-Witten invariants of a symplectic sum Z=X#Y in terms of the relative GW invariants of X and Y. Several applications to enumerative geometry are given.
Notes for a short lecture series, covering exploded manifolds, the moduli stack of curves in exploded manifolds, and a tropical gluing formula for Gromov-Witten invariants: a gluing formula providing a degeneration formula for Gromov-Witten invariants in normal-crossing degenerations. I gave the original lecture series in April 2016 at the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stonybrook. Video of the lectures is available on the SCGP website, http://scgp.stonybrook.edu/video_portal/video.php?id=2595
Rozansky and Witten proposed a 3-dimensional sigma-model whose target space is a hyperkähler manifold. They conjectured that this theory has an associated TQFT, with Hilbert spaces given by certain cohomology groups of the hyperkähler manifold. On the other hand, there is a certain modified TQFT constructed by Murakami and Ohtsuki using the universal quantum invariant. We explain how the Rozansky-Witten TQFT can be obtained from the latter by applying a `hyperkähler weight system'.
We derive a weighted $L^2$-estimate of the Witten spinor in a complete Riemannian spin manifold $(M^n,g)$ of non-negative scalar curvature which is asymptotically Schwarzschild. The interior geometry of $M$ enters this estimate only via the lowest eigenvalue of the square of the Dirac operator on a conformal compactification of $M$.
Witten-Helffer-Sjöstrand theory is an addition to Morse theory and Hodge-de Rham theory for Riemannian manifolds and considerably improves on them by injecting some spectral theory of elliptic operators. It can serve as a general tool to prove results about comparison of numerical invariants associated to compact manifolds analytically, i.e. by using a Riemannian metric, or combinatorially, i.e. by using a triangulation. It can be also refined to provide an alternative presentation of Novikov Morse theory and improve on it in many respects. In particular it can be used in symplectic topology a…
In this paper, we study the Seiberg-Witten equations on the product R x Y, where Y is a compact 3-manifold with boundary. Following the approach of Salamon and Wehrheim in the instanton case, we impose Lagrangian boundary conditions for the Seiberg- Witten equations. The resulting equations we obtain constitute a nonlinear, nonlocal boundary value problem. We establish regularity, compactness, and Fredholm properties for the Seiberg- Witten equations supplied with Lagrangian boundary conditions arising from the monopole spaces studied in [20]. This work therefore serves as an analytic foundati…
A simplified, user-friendly repackaging of the curvature estimates implied by the Seiberg-Witten equations is formulated in terms of the convex hull of the set of monopole classes. New results are also obtained concerning boundary cases of the resulting forms of the curvature estimates.
This survey paper begins with the description of the duality between arc systems and ribbon graphs embedded in a punctured surface. Then we explain how to cellularize the moduli space of curves in two different ways: using Jenkins-Strebel differentials and using hyperbolic geometry. We also briefly discuss how these two methods are related. Next, we recall the definition of Witten cycles and we illustrate their connection with tautological classes and Weil-Petersson geometry. Finally, we exhibit a simple direct argument to prove that Witten classes are stable.
We introduce the concept of pseudo symplectic capacities which is a mild generalization of that of symplectic capacities. As a generalization of the Hofer-Zehnder capacity we construct a Hofer-Zehnder type pseudo symplectic capacity and estimate it in terms of Gromov-Witten invariants. The (pseudo) symplectic capacities of Grassmannians and some product symplectic manifolds are computed. As applications we first derive some general nonsqueezing theorems that generalize and unite many previous versions, then prove the Weinstein conjecture for cotangent bundles over a large class of symplectic u…
Main mathematical applications of Frobenius manifolds are in the theory of Gromov - Witten invariants, in singularity theory, in differential geometry of the orbit spaces of reflection groups and of their extensions, in the hamiltonian theory of integrable hierarchies. The theory of Frobenius manifolds establishes remarkable relationships between these, sometimes rather distant, mathematical theories.
Seiberg-Witten theory leads to a delicate interplay between Riemannian geometry and smooth topology in dimension four. In particular, the scalar curvature of any metric must satisfy certain non-trivial estimates if the manifold in question has a non-trivial Seiberg-Witten invariant. However, it has recently been discovered that similar statements also apply to other parts of the curvature tensor. This article presents the most salient aspects of these curvature estimates in a self-contained manner, and shows how they can be applied to the theory of Einstein manifolds. We then probe the issue o…
We exhibit the first examples of hyperbolic three-manifolds for which the Seiberg-Witten equations do not admit any irreducible solution. Our approach relies on hyperbolic geometry in an essential way; it combines an explicit upper bound for the first eigenvalue on coexact $1$-forms $λ_1^*$ on rational homology spheres which admit irreducible solutions together with a version of the Selberg trace formula relating the spectrum of the Laplacian on coexact $1$-forms with the volume and complex length spectrum of a hyperbolic three-manifold. Using these relationships, we also provide precise numer…
