Reading groupS

Spring 2026: Introduction to subriemannian geometry

Resources: We will be reading Montgomery's "A Tour of Subriemannian geometries, their geodesics and applications", and sumplementing when appropriate using Le Donne's "Lecture notes on sub-Riemannian geometry from the Lie group viewpoint."

Plan we will plan to read one chapter a week, adjusting as needed. Please contact me for the zoom link. Meeting time:TBD

Chapter 1: What is a subriemannian manifold? A first example: Heisenberg geometry
Chapter 2: Chow's Theorem, how to find minimizing subriemannian geodesics
Chapter 3: examples of abnormal/singular Subriemannian geodesics
Chapter 4: Curvature of a distribution
Chapter 5: abnormal/singular Subriemannian geodesics
Chapter 6: Examples of distributions
Chapter 11: Metrics on bundles
Chapter 14: Falling, swimmin and orbiting: Mechanics with symmetry
Le Donne: Chapter 3: General theory of Carnot-Caratheodory spaces (Subfinsler geometry)
Le Donne: Chapter 6: SubFinsler Lie groups.

Spring 2024: Topics in Symplectic topology

Weinstein manifolds

[ Daniela ] Contact surgery and symplectic handlebodies - Weinstein

What is a Weinstein manifold? What is a handlebody?

Legendrian Kirby Calculus

[ Ian ] Handlebody construction of Stein surfaces - Gompf section 1-2, also section 2 of https://arxiv.org/pdf/2002.07983.pdf

How do you draw a Weinstein 4-manifold? How do you manipulate Kirby diagrams of Weinstein 4-manifolds? What is a handle-slide? What is a handle cancellation?