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Ambient metrics and exceptional holonomy
PDE & Applied Mathematics| Speaker: | Robin Graham, University of Washington, Seattle |
| Location: | 1147 MSB |
| Start time: | Fri, Mar 13 2015, 4:10PM |
Description
The holonomy of a pseudo-Riemannian metric is a subgroup of the orthogonal group which measures the structure preserved by parallel
translation. Construction of pseudo-Riemannian metrics whose holonomy is an exceptional Lie group has been of great interest in recent
years. This talk will outline a construction of an infinite-dimensional family of metrics in dimension 7 whose holonomy is the split real
form of the exceptional group G_2. The datum for the construction is a generic real-analytic 2-plane field on a manifold of dimension 5;
the metric in dimension 7 arises as the ambient metric of a conformal structure on the 5-manifold defined by Nurowski in terms of the
2-plane field.
Reception after talk.