tbranzov

In this talk I'll present a geometric relation between the Laplace-Beltrami spectra and eigenfunctions on compact Riemannian symmetric spaces and the Borel-Weil theory using ideas from symplectic geometry and geometric quantization.

Anti-canonical pairs (Y, D) are logarithmic K3 surfaces. It is well known that they have a rich geometry. A recent result, whose proof was motivated by mirror-symmetry, establishes a conjecture by Looijenga giving conditions for smoothability of the cusp obtained by contracting D. A central ingredient in the proof is a global Torelli theorem using the mixed Hodge structure on H2(Y −D). In this talk we will formulate and sketch the proof of this result.

I will describe an extension, proposed by Hitchin and Gualtieri, of the notion of a Calabi-Yau structure to generalized Kähler geometry. I will then discuss a conjectural classification of the generalized Kähler Calabi-Yau geometries, expressed in terms of Bogomolov-Beauville decomposition, and present a partial resolution.

Michael R. Douglas received his PhD in Physics in 1988 under the supervision of John Schwarz, one of the developers and leading researchers in superstring theory. Douglas is best known for his work in string theory, for the development of matrix models (the first nonperturbative formulations of string theory), for his work on Dirichlet branes and on noncommutative geometry in string theory, and for the development of the statistical approach to string phenomenology. He has influenced the developments of modern mathematics by finding interpretations of branes on the language of derived categories and introducing the theory of stability conditions for categories.