Questions tagged [dg.differential-geometry]

Complex, contact, Riemannian, pseudo-Riemannian and Finsler geometry, relativity, gauge theory, global analysis.

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Are there periodicity phenomena in manifold topology with odd period?

The study of $n$-manifolds has some well-known periodicities in $n$ with period a power of $2$: $n \bmod 2$ is important. Poincaré duality implies that odd-dimensional compact oriented manifolds ...
Qiaochu Yuan's user avatar
53 votes
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What is the current status of derived differential geometry?

I hope you will excuse this naive and general question. I've read from many places (e.g. Dominic Joyce's website, John Pardon's thesis, etc.) that the/a "right" foundations for many ...
davik's user avatar
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Atiyah's paper on complex structures on $S^6$

M. Atiyah has posted a preprint on arXiv on the non-existence of complex structure on the sphere $S^6$. https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.09366 It relies on the topological $K$-theory $KR$ and in ...
David C's user avatar
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48 votes
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What is the current understanding regarding complex structures on the 6-sphere?

In October 2016, Atiyah famously posted a preprint to the arXiv, "The Non-Existent Complex 6-Sphere" containing a very brief proof $S^6$ admits no complex structure, which I immediately read and ...
jdc's user avatar
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Minimal volume of 4-manifolds

This question came up in a talk of Dieter Kotschick yesterday. The minimal volume of a manifold is the infimum of volumes of Riemannian metrics on the manifold with sectional curvatures bounded in ...
Ian Agol's user avatar
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37 votes
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Converse of the Archimedean property of the sphere

In his remarkable book On the Sphere and Cylinder, where he came tantalizingly close to discovering calculus, Archimedes showed that the area of the portion of the sphere contained between a pair of ...
Mohammad Ghomi's user avatar
28 votes
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507 views

What algebraic structure characterizes all natural operations between differential operators and differential forms?

On a smooth manifold $M$ one can define various algebraic structures, natural with respect to diffeomorphisms: the differential graded-commutative algebra $\Omega(M)$ of differential forms on $M$; ...
Dmitri Pavlov's user avatar
28 votes
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2k views

Nontrivial tangent bundle that is diffeomorphic to the trivial bundle

Is there an example of a smooth $n$-manifold $M$ whose tangent bundle is nontrivial as a bundle but is nonetheless (abstractly) diffeomorphic to the trivial bundle $M \times \mathbb{R}^n$? (This ...
Faisal's user avatar
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26 votes
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Ricci flat metric on $n$-sphere?

Can you put a Ricci flat metric on the $n$-sphere, $n>4$?
Viktor Bundle's user avatar
25 votes
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1k views

Milnor's cartography problem

Let $\Omega$ be a round disc of radius $\alpha<\frac{\pi}{2}$ on the unit sphere $\mathbb{S}^2$. It is easy to construct a $(1,\tfrac{\alpha}{\sin\alpha})$-bi-Lipschitz map from $\Omega$ to the ...
Anton Petrunin's user avatar
22 votes
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Sphere with bounded curvature

Let $V$ be a body in $\mathbb{R}^3$ bounded by a smooth sphere with principal curvatures at most 1 (by absolute value). Is it true that $$\mathop{\rm vol} V\ge \mathop{\rm vol} B,$$ where $B$ denotes ...
Anton Petrunin's user avatar
21 votes
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561 views

Is there a useful theory of D-modules on smooth (non-analytic) manifolds?

D-modules are related to flat connections on vector bundles, end hence local systems. The theory of D-modules (and related notions such as crystals etc.) seems to be very popular in complex analytic ...
ಠ_ಠ's user avatar
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Are the eigenvalues of the Laplacian of a generic Kähler metric simple?

It is a theorem of Uhlenbeck that for a generic Riemannian metric, the Laplacian acting on functions has simple eigenvalues, i.e., all the eigenspaces are 1-dimensional. (Here "generic" means the set ...
Joel Fine's user avatar
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20 votes
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A Green's function for the Laplacian on k-forms

Let $X$ be a compact, oriented, Riemannian $n$-fold. Then we have a Laplacian operator $\Delta = d d^{\ast} + d^{\ast} d$ from $\Omega^k(X)$ to itself. We have the Hodge decomposition $\Omega^k(X) = \...
David E Speyer's user avatar
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Schoen and Yau's proof of the higher dimensional positive mass theorem

In April 2017 Schoen and Yau posted on the arxiv their solution of the time-symmetric positive mass theorem in all dimensions, which has been a significant conjecture since the 70s. As of now, July ...
Quarto Bendir's user avatar
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769 views

Is the determinant of cohomology a TQFT?

If $M$ is an oriented $d$-manifold, let $D(M)$ denote the top exterior power of $H^*(M,\mathbf{C})$. Then $D(M_1 \amalg M_2) = D(M_1) \otimes D(M_2)$. Is there a good recipe for a map $D(M) \to D(N)$...
David Treumann's user avatar
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Modified Willmore energy and surfaces with infinitesimally narrow necks

Disclaimer: This is a copy of a question that I asked on the Mathematics Stack Exchange. It was suggested to me there that the question was worth asking over here. There is an open problem in ...
m3tro's user avatar
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18 votes
0 answers
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Orientation-reversing homotopy equivalence

If there is an orientation-reversing homotopy equivalence on a closed simply-connected orientable manifold is there an orientation-reversing homeomorphism? It is not true, for instance, that if there ...
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18 votes
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Jets of sections of vector bundles expressed by symmetrized iterated covariant derivatives - who did it first?

The (non-unique) bundle isomorphism between the bundle $J^r E$ of $r$-th order jets of sections of a vector bundle $\pi:E\rightarrow M$ and the direct sum $$\bigoplus^r_{k=0}\vee^kT^*M\otimes E\...
Pedro Lauridsen Ribeiro's user avatar
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501 views

Lipschitz constant of a homotopy

Let $n>0$, $\mathbb S^n$ be $n$-sphere and $1\in \mathbb S^n$ be its north pole. A am looking for an example of compact manifold $M$ with a continuous $n$-parameter family of maps $h_x\colon M\to ...
Anton Petrunin's user avatar
17 votes
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747 views

What are hyperkähler metrics used for?

It seems that a lot of effort has been devoted to endow holomorphic-symplectic manifolds with hyperkähler metrics. It started with Calabi [4] with $T^*\mathbb{CP}^n$. Other examples include coadjoint ...
user129123's user avatar
17 votes
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633 views

Is there an Infinite dimensional sheaf theory for analysis on manifolds?

I apologize if this question is slightly vague but I don't know how to ask it non-vaguely. Moreover, my question is about an ideal situation. If there's a close answer which doesn't satisfy all the ...
Saal Hardali's user avatar
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Is the oriented bordism ring generated by homogeneous spaces?

I am trying to find a Riemannian geometrically well-understood set of generators of the oriented bordism ring, including the torsion parts. By a set of generators, I mean that the set generates the ...
Zhenhua Liu's user avatar
16 votes
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428 views

Relationship between the twistor spaces due to Penrose and Salamon

In Penrose's construction of the twistor space of Minkowski spacetime $\mathbb R^{1,3}$, we first complexify $\mathbb R^{1,3}$ to $\mathbb C^4$ and then think of points in it as matrices acting on $\...
Arpan Saha's user avatar
16 votes
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987 views

Definition of Pin groups?

When looking into the definition of a Pin group, it turns out that there are - at least - three different ones in the literature, and they do not agree --- but thankfully all yield the same Spin ...
Ragnar's user avatar
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440 views

Does $S^4$ have a "symplecto-homeomorphic" structure?

The 4-sphere cannot be a symplectic manifold. In particular, it does not admit an atlas whose transition maps are symplectomorphisms $(\mathbb{R}^4,\omega_\text{std})\to(\mathbb{R}^4,\omega_\text{std})...
Chris Gerig's user avatar
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16 votes
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657 views

Does the Ricci flow approach shed light on Poincare conjecture in higher dimension?

I know that the Poincaré conjecture was first proved in dimension ≥ 5, then dimension 4, and finally 3. I'm just curious, does the Ricci flow approach by Perelman shed any light on the high dimension ...
36min's user avatar
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Applications of Berger's Curvature Estimate

I'm interested in applications of the following estimate of Berger on the Riemann curvature tensor: Let $(M,g)$ be a Riemannian manifold of dimension $n \geq 4$, let $p \in M$, and assume that the ...
Connor Mooney's user avatar
15 votes
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212 views

Geometry of Affine Kac-Moody Algebras

I recently asked this question on phys.SE and it was suggested to me to ask it here. One can reconstruct the unitary irreducible representations of compact Lie groups very beautifully in geometric ...
user356359's user avatar
15 votes
0 answers
310 views

How much smoothness does the tennis ball theorem need?

The tennis ball theorem states that a smooth-enough curve that bisects the surface area of a sphere must have at least four inflection points. There are plenty of sources on this but most of them are ...
David Eppstein's user avatar
15 votes
0 answers
442 views

What is an example of a non-abelian gerbe with connection?

Abelian gerbes can arise from obstructions to lifting a principal $C$-bundle to a principal $B$-bundle given some central extension $0\to A \to B \to C \to 0$ or as a representative of a cohomology ...
cheyne's user avatar
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15 votes
0 answers
382 views

Extending Kahler metric from a neighborhood of a divisor to the whole manifold

Let $X$ be a smooth complex projective variety with an ample line bundle $L$, and let $D\subset X$ be a smooth divisor. Suppose in an analytic neighborhood $U$ of $D$ there is a Kahler form $\omega$ ...
aglearner's user avatar
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15 votes
0 answers
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reference - Grothendieck on Thurston's work

In his 'dernières' years Grothendieck gets "interested" in Thurston's work. "[...] je me suis intéressé ces dernières années - la géométrie hyperbolique à la Thurston et ses relations au groupe de ...
tttbase's user avatar
  • 1,700
15 votes
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Homotopy equivalence vs weak homotopy equivalence in Gromov's h-principle

My question concerns Gromov's h-principle for open diffeomorphism-invariant partial differential relations on open manifolds; see e.g. Eliashberg/Mishachev: Introduction to the h-principle, §6.2.A and ...
Marc Nardmann's user avatar
15 votes
0 answers
380 views

Has Cheeger's 'de Rham cohomology' of metric measure spaces been studied beyond its definition?

In J. Cheeger's 'Differentiability of Lipschitz Functions on Metric Measure Spaces' (Geometric and Functional Analysis, 1999, Vol. 9 pp 428-517, see here), a 'de Rham cohomology group' $H_{dR}^1(Z,\mu)...
user avatar
15 votes
0 answers
887 views

How does duality of symmetric spaces explain the hyperbolic cosine theorem?

There is a well-known duality between compact symmetric spaces and symmetric spaces of noncompact type. Basically it goes as follows: If $$G/K$$ is a symmetric space of noncompact type, $$g=k+p$$ the ...
ThiKu's user avatar
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14 votes
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353 views

Gel'fand and Fuks' "Globalizing" of cohomology of formal vector fields

I apologize for the length of this question. If anybody already spent some time with cohomology of (formal) vector fields and the results of Gel'fand and Fuks, I imagine a lot can be skipped. I do ...
Lukas Miaskiwskyi's user avatar
14 votes
0 answers
739 views

Gromov's quick "proof" of Lefchetz Hyperplane Theorem

I'd say I'm fairly comfortable with standard proofs of the Lefschetz Hyperplane theorem (e.g. lefschetz pencils, morse theory, etc.). However, in the first chapter of Gromov's Partial Differential ...
user111650's user avatar
14 votes
1 answer
1k views

The perturbation of non-Hamiltonian algebraic vector fields

In this question, we are interested in the number of limit cycles which appears in the following perturbational system: \begin{equation}\cases{ x'=y -x^{2}+\epsilon P(x,y) \\ y'=-x+\epsilon Q(x,y) } \...
Ali Taghavi's user avatar
13 votes
0 answers
217 views

Which G-structures lead to analyticity?

It’s well known that integrability conditions on $G$-structures sometimes force a unique analytic structure on the underlying manifold: A Lie group structure (a 1-structure with equivariantly ...
level1807's user avatar
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13 votes
0 answers
370 views

Does the existence of an almost complex structure solely depend on the topology of the manifold?

To be precise, let $M$ and $N$ be two 2n-dimensional smooth, closed manifolds that are homeomorphic. If $M$ admits an almost complex structure, can we deduce that $N$ also admits an almost complex ...
Chicken feed's user avatar
13 votes
0 answers
317 views

Exotic smooth structures on Fano manifolds

If two Fano projective manifolds are homeomorphic are they diffeomorphic? There are examples with one manifold being Fano and the other of general type (Barlow surfaces). Moreover, the number of ...
user avatar
13 votes
0 answers
665 views

Algebraic content of Gauss's Theorema Egregium

Let me first recall what Gauss's Theorema Egregium says. Consider a surface isometrically embedded in $\mathbb{R}^3$. In some local coordinates, let the first and second fundamental forms be $$E \...
Tara's user avatar
  • 131
13 votes
0 answers
703 views

Hilbert 16th problem and dynamical Lefschetz trace formula

I would like to apply the known version of the conjectural formula (11) page !0 of the paper Number theory and dynamical Lefschetz trace formula. Disclaimer: I do not have a complete ...
Ali Taghavi's user avatar
13 votes
0 answers
293 views

Covering S2 with great circles

Let $S_2$ be the unit 2-dimensional sphere. Is there a way to cover it with great circles such that each point on $S_2$ has 1 or 2 great circles that go through it?
Y.X's user avatar
  • 399
13 votes
0 answers
1k views

Eta-Invariant and Atiyah-Patodi-Singer Index Theorem

In Quantum Field Theory and Jones Polynomial (equation 2.16), Witten used a formula relating the APS eta-invariant to the Chern-Simons action. Witten claimed that it is derived from the Atiyah-Patodi-...
Valac's user avatar
  • 615
13 votes
0 answers
359 views

Finite dimensional approximation of Donaldson theory

In addition to the Seiberg-Witten invariant there has been further success with "finite dimensional approximations" of the Seiberg-Witten theory: Bauer-Furuta's stable (co)homotopy invariants, and ...
Chris Gerig's user avatar
  • 17.1k
13 votes
0 answers
348 views

Log symplectic vortex equations in Hamiltonian log GW theory

Hamiltonian Gromov-Witten theory(see Mundet-Tian paper) corresponds to a new type of Symplectic vortex equations: Such type of models gives a connection to Hitchin-Kobayashi correspondence and Floer ...
user avatar
13 votes
0 answers
707 views

Kähler-Ricci flow approach for Beauville-Bogomolov type decomposition?

Is there any Kähler Ricci flow method for solving structure theorems in Algebraic geometry In fact If $X$ be a Calabi-Yau manifold then we can descend the Kähler Ricci flow to its finite etale ...
user avatar
13 votes
0 answers
353 views

Euler characteristic of *hyperbolic* orbifolds

This is a follow-up to this question. Which rational numbers arise as Euler characteristics of orbifold quotients of $\mathbb{H}^n?$ The answer is not even clear for $n=2.$ It is clear that the Euler ...
Igor Rivin's user avatar
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