Penn Arts & Sciences Logo

Geometry-Topology Seminar

Tuesday, November 20, 2007 - 4:30pm

Keith Burns

Northwestern University

Location

University of Pennsylvania

DRL 4C8

note special day and time

Abstract: Two points in a Riemannian manifold form a secure configuration if all geodesics between them can be blocked by a finite number of points; otherwise they are insecure. I will survey the few known results. In particular for compact manifolds with no conjugate points there is an alternative: either the manifold is flat and all configurations are secure or the manifold is not flat and all configurations are insecure.