Mathematics Graduate Students Organization

Seminar:

Date: November 18

Back in the 1980's, Donaldson began his groundbreaking study of 4-manifolds using gauge theory and instantons. Later, Floer used Donaldson's principles together with infinite-dimensional Morse theory in order to create new homology theory for 3-manifolds, namely instanton Floer homology. But in his series of papers, he also followed Gromov's work of J-holomorphic curves and introduced another homology theory, namely Lagrangian Floer homology. The purpose of this talk is to ponder on some aspects of four-manifolds the author finds very interesting.