Seminar "Instantons and Solitons"

Organiser: Lars Andersson

The seminar will be held in a research seminar style. It deals with topics related to gravitation and geometry, including the following:

  • Gravitational Instantons --- four-dimensional, complete, Ricci flat
    manifolds with at least quadratic curvature decay. There are several
    families of instantons, which all have special geometry. Solution
    generating techniques, including the Belinski-Zakharov soliton method,
    play an important role in constructing instantons. There are several
    uniqueness conjectures for instantons, which remain open.
  • Solitons --- localized steady states of field theories. There is a
    zoo of examples, in general relativity (eg. black holes, i.e. Lorentzian
    versions of gravitational instantons), wave equations (eg. Q Balls),
    Maxwell-Dirac theory, to name just a few. Surprisingly little is known
    about the stability and dynamics of these objects in 3+1 dimensions.

Prerequisites: Participants are assumed to have basic knowledge in differential
geometry and general relativity.

Modul: Seminar in Analysis/Geometrie/Math. Physik

Zeit: Preliminary date & time is 10AM on Wednesdays but this can be adapted to
needs of participants.

For more information visit the Moodle page of the seminar.