2015 Dec 23

# Topology & geometry: Oren Ben-Bassat (Oxford University), "Multiple Lagrangian Intersections"

11:00am to 12:45pm

## Location:

Ross building, Hebrew University (Seminar Room 70A)
Abstract: Joyce and others have used shifted symplectic geometry to define Donaldson-Thomas Invariants. This kind of geometry naturally appears on derived moduli stacks of perfect complexes on Calabi-Yau varieties. One wonderful feature of shifted symplectic geometry (developed by Pantev, Toën, Vaquié and Vezzosi) is that fibre products (i.e. intersections) of Lagrangians automatically carry Lagrangian structures. Using a strange property of triple intersections from arXiv:1309.0596, this extra structure can be organized into a 2-category.
2016 May 25

# Topology & geometry, Richard Bamler (UC Berkeley), "There are finitely many surgeries in Perelman's Ricci flow"

11:00am to 12:45pm

## Location:

Ross building, Hebrew University (Seminar Room 70A)
Abstract: Although the Ricci flow with surgery has been used by Perelman to solve the Poincaré and Geometrization Conjectures, some of its basic properties are still unknown. For example it has been an open question whether the surgeries eventually stop to occur (i.e. whether there are finitely many surgeries) and whether the full geometric decomposition of the underlying manifold is exhibited by the flow as t→∞.
2015 Nov 04

# Topology & geometry: Chaim Even Zohar (HUJI), "Invariants of Random Knots"

11:00am to 12:45pm

## Location:

Ross building, Hebrew University (Seminar Room 70A)
Title: Invariants of Random Knots. Abstract: Random curves in space and how they are knotted give an insight into the behavior of "typical" knots and links, and are expected to introduce the probabilistic method into the mathematical study of knots. They have been studied by biologists and physicists in the context of the structure of random polymers. There have been many results obtained via computational experiment, but few explicit computations.
2016 Mar 30

# Topology & geometry, Amitai Zernik (Hebrew University), "Fixed-point Expressions for Open Gromov-Witten Invariants - idea of the proof"

11:00am to 12:45pm

## Location:

Ross building, Hebrew University (Seminar Room 70A)
Abstract: In this pair of talks I will discuss how to obtain fixed-point expressions for open Gromov-Witten invariants. The talks will be self-contained, and the second talk will only require a small part of the first talk, which we will review. The Atiyah-Bott localization formula has become a valuable tool for computation of symplectic invariants given in terms of integrals on the moduli spaces of closed stable maps. In contrast, the moduli spaces of open stable maps have boundary which must be taken into account in order to apply fixed-point localization. Homological perturbation
2015 Dec 02

# Topology & geometry: Pavel Paták (HUJI), "Homological non-embeddability and a qualitative topological Helly-type theorem"

11:00am to 12:45pm

## Location:

Ross building, Hebrew University (Seminar Room 70A)
Abstract: The classical theorem of Van Kampen and Flores states that the k-dimensional skeleton of (2k+2)-dimensional simplex cannot be embedded into R2k. We present a version of this theorem for chain maps and as an application we prove a qualitative topological Helly-type theorem. If we define the Helly number of a finite family of sets to be one if all sets in the family have a point in common and as the largest size of inclusion-minimal subfamily with empty intersection otherwise, the theorem can be stated as follows:
2016 Mar 16

# Topology & geometry, Sara Tukachinsky (Hebrew University), "Point-like bounding chains in open Gromov-Witten theory"

11:00am to 12:45pm

## Location:

Ross building, Hebrew University (Seminar Room 70A)
Abstract: Over a decade ago Welschinger defined invariants of real symplectic manifolds of complex dimensions 2 and 3, which count $J$-holomorphic disks with boundary and interior point constraints. Since then, the problem of extending the definition to higher dimensions has attracted much attention.
2016 Jan 13

# Topology & geometry, Penka Vasileva (Paris Rive Gauche), "Real Gromov-Witten theory in all genera"

11:00am to 12:45pm

## Location:

Ross building, Hebrew University (Seminar Room 70A)
Abstract: We construct positive-genus analogues of Welschinger's invariants for many real symplectic manifolds, including the odd-dimensional projective spaces and the quintic threefold. Our approach to the orientability problem is based entirely on the topology of real bundle pairs over symmetric surfaces. This allows us to endow the uncompactified moduli spaces of real maps from symmetric surfaces of all topological types with natural orientations and to verify that they extend across the codimension-one boundaries of these spaces.
2015 Dec 31

# Groups & dynamics: Thang Neguyen (Weizmann) - Rigidity of quasi-isometric embeddings

10:00am to 11:00am

## Location:

Ross building, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, (Room 70)
To every topological group, one can associate a unique universal minimal flow (UMF): a flow that maps onto every minimal flow of the group. For some groups (for example, the locally compact ones), this flow is not metrizable and does not admit a concrete description. However, for many "large" Polish groups, the UMF is metrizable, can be computed, and carries interesting combinatorial information. The talk will concentrate on some new results that give a characterization of metrizable UMFs of Polish groups. It is based on two papers, one joint
2016 Dec 29

# Groups and dynamics: Masaki Tsukamoto (lecture 4)

10:30am to 11:30am

Ross 70
2016 Mar 31

# Groups & dynamics: Paul Nelson (ETH) - Quantum variance on quaternion algebras

10:00am to 11:00am

## Location:

Ross building, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, (Room 70)
To every topological group, one can associate a unique universal minimal flow (UMF): a flow that maps onto every minimal flow of the group. For some groups (for example, the locally compact ones), this flow is not metrizable and does not admit a concrete description. However, for many "large" Polish groups, the UMF is metrizable, can be computed, and carries interesting combinatorial information. The talk will concentrate on some new results that give a characterization of metrizable UMFs of Polish groups. It is based on two papers, one joint
2016 Dec 15

# Groups and dynamics: Yair Hartman (Northwestern) - Percolation, Invariant Random Subgroups and Furstenberg Entropy

10:30am to 11:30am

## Location:

Ross 70
Abstract: In this talk I'll present a joint work with Ariel Yadin, in which we solve the Furstenberg Entropy Realization Problem for finitely supported random walks (finite range jumps) on free groups and lamplighter groups. This generalizes a previous result of Bowen. The proof consists of several reductions which have geometric and probabilistic flavors of independent interests. All notions will be explained in the talk, no prior knowledge of Invariant Random Subgroups or Furstenberg Entropy is assumed.
2016 Jan 07

# Groups & dynamics: Mark Shusterman (TAU) - Ranks of subgroups in boundedly generated groups

10:00am to 11:00am

## Location:

Ross building, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, (Room 70)
To every topological group, one can associate a unique universal minimal flow (UMF): a flow that maps onto every minimal flow of the group. For some groups (for example, the locally compact ones), this flow is not metrizable and does not admit a concrete description. However, for many "large" Polish groups, the UMF is metrizable, can be computed, and carries interesting combinatorial information. The talk will concentrate on some new results that give a characterization of metrizable UMFs of Polish groups. It is based on two papers, one joint
2016 Dec 01

# Groups and dynamics: Masaki Tsukamoto (lecture 1)

10:30am to 11:30am

## Location:

Ross 70
INTRODUCTION TO MEAN DIMENSION AND THE EMBEDDING PROBLEM OF DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS (Part 1)
2016 Nov 24

# Groups and dynamics- Oren Becker

10:30am to 11:30am

## Location:

Ross 70
Speaker: Oren Becker Title: Locally testable groups Abstract: Arzhantseva and Paunescu [AP2015] showed that if two permutations X and Y in Sym(n) nearly commute (i.e. XY is close to YX), then the pair (X,Y) is close to a pair of permutations that really commute.
2016 Dec 22

# Groups and dynamics: Masaki Tsukamoto (lecture 3)

10:30am to 11:30am

Ross 70