Holomorphic Curves In Lagrangian Torus Fibrations

Comprehensive and visual introduction to the geometry of 4-dimensional symplectic manifolds via 2-dimensional almost-toric diagrams.

This monograph provides an accessible introduction to the applications of pseudoholomorphic curves in symplectic and contact geometry, with emphasis on dimensions four and three. The first half of the book focuses on McDuff's characterization of symplectic rational and ruled surfaces, one of the classic early applications of holomorphic curve theory. The proof presented here uses the language of Lefschetz fibrations and pencils, thus it includes some background on these topics, in addition to a survey of the required analytical results on holomorphic curves. Emphasizing applications rather than technical results, the analytical survey mostly refers to other sources for proofs, while aiming to provide precise statements that are widely applicable, plus some informal discussion of the analytical ideas behind them. The second half of the book then extends this program in two complementary directions: (1) a gentle introduction to Gromov-Witten theory and complete proof of the classification of uniruled symplectic 4-manifolds; and (2) a survey of punctured holomorphic curves and their applications to questions from 3-dimensional contact topology, such as classifying the symplectic fillings of planar contact manifolds. This book will be particularly useful to graduate students and researchers who have basic literacy in symplectic geometry and algebraic topology, and would like to learn how to apply standard techniques from holomorphic curve theory without dwelling more than necessary on the analytical details. This book is also part of the Virtual Series on Symplectic Geometry http://www.springer.com/series/16019

This work discusses a technique to induce a Lagrangian torus fibration on any manifold that can fit into a symplectic toric degenerating family. For instance, it explicitely constructs Lagrangian torus fibrations on all Calabi-Yau projective hypersurfaces. In the process, it analyses the existence of standard neighborhoods of some singular symplectic submanifolds.

In 1993, M Kontsevich proposed a conceptual framework for explaining the phenomenon of mirror symmetry. Mirror symmetry had been discovered by physicists in string theory as a duality between families of three-dimensional Calabi-Yau manifolds. Kontsevich's proposal uses Fukaya's construction of the A∞-category of Lagrangian submanifolds on the symplectic side and the derived category of coherent sheaves on the complex side. The theory of mirror symmetry was further enhanced by physicists in the language of D-branes and also by Strominger-Yau-Zaslow in the geometric set-up of (special) Lagrangian torus fibrations. It rapidly expanded its scope across from geometry, topology, algebra to physics.In this volume, leading experts in the field explore recent developments in relation to homological mirror symmetry, Floer theory, D-branes and Gromov-Witten invariants. Kontsevich-Soibelman describe their solution to the mirror conjecture on the abelian variety based on the deformation theory of A∞-categories, and Ohta describes recent work on the Lagrangian intersection Floer theory by Fukaya-Oh-Ohta-Ono which takes an important step towards a rigorous construction of the A∞-category. There follow a number of contributions on the homological mirror symmetry, D-branes and the Gromov-Witten invariants, e.g. Getzler shows how the Toda conjecture follows from recent work of Givental, Okounkov and Pandharipande. This volume provides a timely presentation of the important developments of recent years in this rapidly growing field.

Symplectic and contact geometry naturally emerged from the mathematical description of classical physics. The discovery of new rigidity phenomena and properties satisfied by these geometric structures launched a new research field worldwide. The intense activity of many European research groups in this field is reflected by the ESF Research Networking Programme "Contact And Symplectic Topology" (CAST). The lectures of the Summer School in Nantes (June 2011) and of the CAST Summer School in Budapest (July 2012) provide a nice panorama of many aspects of the present status of contact and symplectic topology. The notes of the minicourses offer a gentle introduction to topics which have developed in an amazing speed in the recent past. These topics include 3-dimensional and higher dimensional contact topology, Fukaya categories, asymptotically holomorphic methods in contact topology, bordered Floer homology, embedded contact homology, and flexibility results for Stein manifolds.

The relationship between Tropical Geometry and Mirror Symmetry goes back to the work of Kontsevich and Y. Soibelman (2000), who applied methods of non-archimedean geometry (in particular, tropical curves) to Homological Mirror Symmetry. In combination with the subsequent work of Mikhalkin on the “tropical” approach to Gromov-Witten theory and the work of Gross and Siebert, Tropical Geometry has now become a powerful tool. Homological Mirror Symmetry is the area of mathematics concentrated around several categorical equivalences connecting symplectic and holomorphic (or algebraic) geometry. The central ideas first appeared in the work of Maxim Kontsevich (1993). Roughly speaking, the subject can be approached in two ways: either one uses Lagrangian torus fibrations of Calabi-Yau manifolds (the so-called Strominger-Yau-Zaslow picture, further developed by Kontsevich and Soibelman) or one uses Lefschetz fibrations of symplectic manifolds (suggested by Kontsevich and further developed by Seidel). Tropical Geometry studies piecewise-linear objects which appear as “degenerations” of the corresponding algebro-geometric objects.

MATRIX is Australia’s international and residential mathematical research institute. It facilitates new collaborations and mathematical advances through intensive residential research programs, each 1-4 weeks in duration. This book is a scientific record of the ten programs held at MATRIX in 2019 and the two programs held in January 2020: · Topology of Manifolds: Interactions Between High and Low Dimensions · Australian-German Workshop on Differential Geometry in the Large · Aperiodic Order meets Number Theory · Ergodic Theory, Diophantine Approximation and Related Topics · Influencing Public Health Policy with Data-informed Mathematical Models of Infectious Diseases · International Workshop on Spatial Statistics · Mathematics of Physiological Rhythms · Conservation Laws, Interfaces and Mixing · Structural Graph Theory Downunder · Tropical Geometry and Mirror Symmetry · Early Career Researchers Workshop on Geometric Analysis and PDEs · Harmonic Analysis and Dispersive PDEs: Problems and Progress The articles are grouped into peer-reviewed contributions and other contributions. The peer-reviewed articles present original results or reviews on a topic related to the MATRIX program; the remaining contributions are predominantly lecture notes or short articles based on talks or activities at MATRIX.

The main goal of this book is to establish the fundamental theorems of the subject in full and rigourous detail. In particular, the book contains complete proofs of Gromov's compactness theorem for spheres, of the gluing theorem for spheres, and of the associatively of quantum multiplication in the semipositive case. The book can also serve as an introduction to current work in symplectic topology.