Geometric PDE Seminar

The "sigma_k Yamabe problem" is a fully nonlinear generalization of the Yamabe problem, in which one attempts to find a conformal multiple of a given metric to make constant the k-th elementary symmetric function of the eigenvalues of the Schouten tensor. This talk will discuss a modification of this problem defined by the renormalized volume coefficients which arise in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence. The work is partly motivated by a recent result of Alice Chang and Hao Fang concerning a variational property of the renormalized volume coefficients.