MATH 758: Topics in Topology: Symplectic Geometry (spring 2008)

Instructor: Tara Holm

Meeting Time & Room

The goal of this course is to provide a fast introduction to symplectic geometry, following Ana Cannas da Silva's Lectures on Symplectic Geometry. We will learn about symplectic manifolds, local forms, Kahler structures, Hamiltonian actions and moment maps, symplectic reduction, and toric varieties (from the symplectic perspective). This should leave enough time for presentations by students on a wide variety of papers that touch on some of these subjects. Students are expected to know the basics of differentiable manifolds and have knowledge of de Rham cohomology, such as is covered in MATH 652. Comfort with algebraic topology may be helpful.