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Geometry-Topology Seminar

Thursday, October 3, 2019 - 4:30pm

Daniel Stern

University of Toronto

Location

University of Pennsylvania

DRL 4C8

We show that a natural reinterpretation of the classical Bochner identity for harmonic one-forms reveals an intriguing relationship between the scalar curvature of a manifold M and the geometry of the level sets of harmonic (circle-valued) functions on M. These ideas provide new tools for the study of positive scalar curvature, and lead to several sharp geometric inequalities relating the scalar curvature to other geometric invariants of three-manifolds.