Geometry & Topology

Event Information Sectional Curvature and convexity for manifolds with density
16:10 on Monday March 27, 2017
17:00 on Monday March 27, 2017
BA6183, Bahen Center, 40 St. George St.
William Wylie

Syracuse University

A fundamental principle in Riemannian geometry is that bounds on the sectional curvature are equivalent to appropriate convexity properties of the underlying metric space. In this talk we will develop a generalization of this theory to Riemannian manifolds equipped with a density function. We obtain generalizations of many of the classical comparison results such as the (non-smooth) 1/4-pinched sphere theorem, the splitting theorem, and the Cartan-Hadamard theorem. This is joint work with Lee Kennard (Univ. of Oklahoma) and Dmytro Yeroshkin (Idaho State).