Title: String theory, geometry and Ricci flow

Time: Thursday October 25, 2011, 02:00-03:00 pm

Speaker: Prof. M. Douglas,Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, Stony Brook University

Venue: Room 09 at Quan-Zhai ( 全斋), New location for BICMR, Peking University

Abstract: One of the very first appearances of Ricci flow in physics or mathematics was in the 1980 work by Dan Friedan which showed that it describes the renormalization group of the nonlinear sigma model. We review this work for mathematicians, and survey a few of the many developments it led to in physics, such as its role in string compactification, and the theory of the gauged linear sigma model which is used in mirror symmetry. We then describe some work in progress towards a new Hamiltonian formulation of Ricci flow.