School and conference in Poisson Geometry

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

Abstract Award: DMS-1005829 Principal Investigator: Alan D. Weinstein This grant supports travel to Brazil for US participants (primarily graduate students and postdocs) at the conference "Poisson 2010," to be held in IMPA in Rio de Janeiro, July 26-30, preceded by a preparatory school of three days in length. With roots in classical mechanics about 200 years ago and work of Sophus Lie about a century ago, the subject of Poisson geometry crystallized through work of Lichnerowicz and Kirillov in the 1970's. Its influence now extends to a wide variety of areas, including symplectic geometry and topology, deformation theory, representation theory, algebraic geometry, integrable hamiltonian systems, and field theory. In recent years, Poisson geometry has found new applications in string topology, the geometric Langlands program, and the geometry of complex surfaces. Developments in these and other timely subjets will be addressed in the school and conference. The meeting, whose full title is "Poisson Geometry in Mathematics and Physics," is the seventh in a biannual series which brings together mathematicians and mathematical physicists with common interests in Poisson geometry and its applications. This geometry provides a very important bridge between mathematics and physics and between classical and quantum physics. Speakers at the school and conference have been chosen not only for the importance of their results but also for their ability to communicate them to a broad audience of mathematicians and physicists. Proceedings will be published in a manner which makes them accessible at low (or no) cost to a wide readership, in order to stimulate further study and research in the rapidly growing area of Poisson geometry. Detailed information about the conference, and about others in the biannual series, may be found at poissongeometry.org.