Member Seminar

Speaker: Saman Habibi Esfahani, CMSA

Title: Gauge theory, from low dimensions to higher dimensions and back

Abstract: Almost thirty years ago, Donaldson and Thomas proposed extending powerful ideas from gauge theory, which had transformed the study of three- and four-dimensional manifolds, to higher dimensions, with the goal of defining new invariants of special holonomy manifolds. In this talk, I will outline the main ideas behind this program, mention some recent progress, and describe the key obstacles that remain, most notably non-compactness phenomena that make the analysis difficult.