I will describe Bilu's equidistribution theorem for roots of polynomials, and explain some implications this has on entropy of toral automorphisms.

Entropy was first defined for actions of the integers by Kolmogorov in 1958 and then extended to actions of countable amenable groups by Kieffer in 1975. Recently, there has been a surge of research in entropy theory following groundbreaking work of Lewis Bowen in 2008 which defined entropy for actions of sofic groups. In this mini-course I will cover these recent developments. I will carefully define the notions of sofic entropy (for actions of sofic groups) and Rokhlin entropy (for actions of general countable groups), discuss many of the main results, and go through some of the proofs.

Abstract: The automorphism group of a subshift $(X,\sigma)$ is the group of homeomorphisms of $X$ that commute with $\sigma$. It is known that such groups can be extremely large for positive entropy subshifts (like full shifts or mixing SFT). In this talk I will present some recent progress in the understanding of the opposite case, the low complexity one. I will show that automorphism groups are highly constrained for low complexity subshifts. For instance, for a minimal subshifts with sublinear complexity the automorphism group is generated by the shift and a finite set.

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→∞.

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

Abstract: A Hamiltonian isotopy class of positive Lagrangians in an almost Calabi-Yau manifold admits a natural Riemannian metric. This metric has a Levi-Civita connection, and hence, it gives rise to a notion of geodesics. The geodesic equation is fully non-linear degenerate elliptic, and in general, it is yet unknown whether the initial value problem and boundary problem are well-posed. However, results on the existence of geodesics could shed new light on special Lagrangians, mirror symmetry and the strong Arnold conjecture.

Abstract: We will give a beginner's introduction to simple homotopy theory and explain how it applies to prove the s-cobordism theorem, a generalization of the h-cobordism theorem for non-simply-connected h-cobordisms.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Abstract:

Abstract: We use a geometric idea to give an analytic estimate for the word-length in the pure braid group of S^2. This yields that the L^1-norm (and hence each L^p-norm, including L^2) on the group of area-preserving diffeomorphisms of S^2 is unbounded. This solves an open question arising from the work of Shnirelman and Eliashberg-Ratiu. Joint work in progress with Michael Brandenbursky.