Upcoming talks
March 11, 2026
- Ben Lowe: Scalar Curvature and Minimal Surfaces in Hyperbolizable Manifolds
(16:30 Paris, 10:30 am NYC) - There is by now a broad body of work on the topology of Riemannian manifolds with positive scalar curvature, and it remains a flourishing field of study to this day. Much less is known about negative scalar curvature lower bounds. Here one seeks to pass from a negative scalar curvature lower bound, given knowledge of the ambient topology, to a statement about some “geometric feature” of the ambient Riemannian manifold.
After giving a brief overview of what is known, I will focus in this talk on the case where the “geometric feature” in question is a quantity measuring the asymptotic growth rate of minimal surfaces, counted by area. The latter was introduced by Calegari-Marques-Neves, and is motivated by the theory of the geodesic flow of a compact negatively curved Riemannian manifold, one of the hallmark examples of a chaotic dynamical system. In contrast to the case of geodesics, however, tools from geometric analysis such as the Ricci flow are important when one seeks to obtain analogous results for minimal surfaces. I will give a gentle overview of the key ideas here while avoiding technical details.
Finally, I will discuss an application to the following general question, suitably formulated: to what extent is a Riemannian manifold determined by the minimal surfaces that it contains? Based on joint work with Andre Neves, and Yangyang Li and James Marshall Reber.
March 25, 2026
- Balarka Sen: tba
(16:30 Paris, 11:30 (!) am NYC)
April 8, 2026
- Kai Xu: tba
(16:30 Paris, 10:30 am NYC)
April 22, 2026
- Regina Rotman: tba
(16:30 Paris, 10:30 am NYC)
Previous talks
Seminar Info
Each session will consist of one or two lectures on a recent advance in geometry. Not all the talks will concern scalar curvature but perhaps many will. Each talk will be followed by a discussion both in person and online. Everyone is welcome to join the session live (zoom) or watch the recorded videos of the talks later.Zoom starts at 16:30 Paris time:
click here to register and receive linkIHES Carmin TV Channel Info:
https://www.carmin.tv/en/collections/not-only-scalar-curvature-seminarOrganizers
Misha Gromov, IHES
Website: https://www.ihes.fr/~gromov/
Bernhard Hanke, University of Augsburg
Website: https://www.uni-augsburg.de/de/fakultaet/mntf/math/prof/diff/team/bernhard-hanke/
Christina Sormani, CUNY Graduate Center and Lehman College
Website: https://sites.google.com/site/professorsormani/home
Gouliang Yu, Texas A&M University
Website: https://www.math.tamu.edu/people/formalpg.php?user=guoliangyu