Special Year 2018-19: Variational Methods in Geometry

Abstract: The Clifford torus is the simplest nontotally geodesic minimal surface in S^3. It is a product surface, it is helicoidal, and it is a solution obtained by separation of variables. We will show that there are more minimal submanifolds with...

Abstract: The Allen-Cahn equation behaves as a desingularization of the area functional. This allows for a PDE approach to the construction of minimal hypersurfaces in closed Riemannian manifolds. After presenting and overview of the subject, I will...

Abstract: This will be an overview of spacetime aspects of mean curvature includingtrapped surfaces, marginally outer trapped surfaces, and the role that they playin the spacetime positive energy theorem and Penrose inequality. We willsurvey the...

In this talk we will survey recent progress on the Beresticky-Caffarelli-Nirenberg Conjecture in Space Forms; that is, let $\Omega$ be an open connected domain of a complete connected Riemannian manifold ($M,g$) and consider the OEP given by
\begin...

Preliminary I will expose a technique developed with T. Rivi\`{e}re to prove energy identities (weak compactness) for sequences of solutions of any conformally invariant problem of second order in dimension 2, see [1]. Then after introducing some...

In the early 80’s, Yau conjectured that in any closed 3-manifold there should be infinitely many minimal surfaces. I will review previous contributions to the question and present a proof of the conjecture, which builds on min-max methods developed...

We'll describe a joint project with X. Zhou in which we use min-max techniques to prove existence of closed hypersurfaces with prescribed mean curvature in closed Riemannian manifolds. Our min-max theory handles the case of nonzero constant mean...

Following a program proposed by Gromov, we study metric singularities of positive scalar curvature of codimension two and three. In addition, we describe a comparison theorem for positive scalar curvature that is captured by polyhedra. Part of this...

In the 80s Pitts-Rubinstein conjectured that certain kinds of Heegaard surfaces in three-manifolds can be isotoped to index 1 minimal surfaces. I’ll describe in detail a proof of their conjecture and some applications. This is joint work with...

We consider the classical problem of prescribing the scalar curvature of a manifold via conformal deformation of the metric, dating back to works by Kazdan and Warner. This problem is mainly understood in low dimensions, where blow-ups of solutions...