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Geometry-Topology Seminar

Thursday, October 17, 2013 - 4:30pm

Karin Melnick

University of Maryland

Location

University of Pennsylvania

DRL 4C8

The exponential map in Riemannian geometry conjugates the differential of an isometry at a point with the action of the isometry near the point. It thus provides a linear normal form for all isometries fixing a point. Conformal transformations are not linearizable in general. I will discuss a suite of normal forms theorems in conformal geometry and, more generally, for parabolic geometries, a rich family of geometric structures of which conformal, projective, and CR structures are examples.