UBC Differential Geometry Learning Seminar

What do soap films and event horizons of black holes have in common? They are both examples of minimal surfaces, which are critical points of the area functional among all other surfaces which share the same area and are commonly studied objects in geometric analysis.

About

The differential geometry group at UBC organizes a student led learning seminar to help facilitate the sharing of ideas. We usually meet once a week during both winter semesters (September - April). Typical topics include minimal surfaces, Ricci flow, mean curvature flow, harmonic maps, Lagrangian submanifolds, etc.

If you're interested in attending, please see the schedule below to see where and when we will be meeting next. We always welcome new attendees. If you're interested in giving a talk of your own, please email one of our organizers (Professor Chau, Adam Martens).

Familiarity with differential and Riemannian manifolds (UBC MATH 525 and 526) is assumed.

Upcoming Talks

Here you'll find some basic information (including how to attend) our next scheduled talks.

Past Talks

Here you'll find some basic information, including the Zoom recording if applicable, on our past talks.

Speaker: Tobias Lamm.
Topic: Index estimates for sequences of harmonic maps.
Reference(s): NA.
- Part 1. August 15th. Recording unavailable.

Speaker: Caleb Suan.
Topic: Dirac Operators on Spinor Bundles of Nearly-Parallel G₂ Manifolds.
Reference(s): The kernel of the Rarita-Schwinger operator on Riemannian spin manifolds by Homma and Semmelmann, and Preserving Parallel Spinors under Metric Deformations by Wang.
- Part 1. March 29th. Recording unavailable.
- Part 2. April 5th. Recording.

Speaker: Zhichao Wang.
Topic: Allard Regularity Theorem
Reference(s): Chapter 5 of Leon Simon's Introduction to Geometric Measure Theory, available online here.
- Part 1. March 1, 2023. Recording.
- Part 2. March 8, 2023. Recording.
- Part 3. March 15, 2023. Recording.
- Part 4. March 22, 2023. Recording unavailable.

Speaker: Adam Martens.
Topic: Example of nonexistence of the Ricci flow.
Reference(s): NA.
- Part 1. February 15, 2023. Recording.

Speaker: Benjamin Friedman.
Topic: Noether's Theorem.
Reference(s): Chapter 4 of Arnold's Mathematical Methods of Classical Mechanics, and chapter 20 of Frankel's The Geometry of Physics.
- Part 1. February 1, 2023. Recording unavailable.
- Part 2. February 8, 2023. Recording.

Speaker: Jialing Zhang.
Topic: Area and spectrum estimates for stable minimal surfaces.
Reference(s): Area and spectrum estimates for stable minimal surfaces by Ovidiu Munteanu et al.
- Part 1. January 11, 2023. Recording.
- Part 2. January 18, 2023. Recording unavailable.
- Part 3. January 25, 2023. Recording unavailable.

Speaker: Caleb Suan.
Topic: The Laplacian Flow of G₂-Structures.
Reference(s): Introduction to G₂ geometry by S. Karigiannis, Flows of G₂-structures by S. Karigiannis, and Geometric flows of G₂-structures by J. Lotay.
- Part 1. November 16, 2022. Recording.
- Part 2. November 23, 2022. Recording.
- Part 3. December 7th, 2022. Recording (first 10 minutes missing).

Speaker: Patrik Coulibaly.
Topic: A Liouville theorem for gradient graphs.
Reference(s): A Liouville property for gradient graphs and a Bernstein problem for Hamiltonian stationary equations by Micah Warren.
- Part 1. October 19, 2022. Recording.
- Part 2. October 26, 2022. Recording.
- Part 3. November 2, 2022. Recording.
Speaker: Adam Martens.
Topic: Sobolev inquality along the Ricci flow
Reference(s): The Logarithmic Sobolev and Sobolev Inequalities Along the Ricci Flow by Rugang Ye.
- Part 1. September 28, 2022. Recording.
- Part 2. October 5, 2022. Recording.
- Part 3. October 12, 2022. Recording.