We will discuss the non-Kahler Calabi-Yau geometry introduced by string theorists C. Hull and A. Strominger. We propose to study these spaces via a parabolic PDE which is a nonlinear flow of non-Kahler metrics. This talk will survey works with T. Collins, T. Fei, D.H. Phong, S.-T. Yau, and X.-W. Zhang.

Abstract: It has been a classical question which manifolds admit Riemannian metrics with positive scalar curvature. I will present some recent progress on this question, ruling out positive scalar curvature on closed aspherical manifolds of dimensions 4 and 5 (as conjectured by Schoen-Yau and by Gromov), as well as complete metrics of positive scalar curvature on an arbitrary manifold connect sum with a torus. Applications include a Schoen-Yau Liouville theorem for all locally conformally flat manifolds. The proofs of these results are based on analyzing generalized soap bubbles - surfaces that are stable solutions to the prescribed mean curvature problem. This talk is based on joint work with O. Chodosh. 

Rapidly oscillating functions associated with Lagrangian submanifolds play a fundamental role in semi-classical analysis. In this talk I will describe how to associate spaces of semi-classical oscillatory functions to isotropic submanifolds of phase space, and sketch their symbol calculus. As a special case we obtain the semi-classical version of the Hermite distributions of Boutet the Monvel and Guillemin. I will also discuss a couple applications of the theory. This is based on joint works with Victor Guillemin and Alejandro Uribe.
 

A complete Kahler metric g on a Kahler manifold M is a "gradient Kahler-Ricci soliton" if there exists a smooth real-valued function f:M-->R  with \nabla f holomorphic such that Ric(g)-Hess(f)+\lambda g=0 for \lambda a real number. I will present some classification results for such manifolds. This is joint work with Alix Deruelle (Université Paris-Sud) and Song Sun (UC Berkeley).

We'll discuss a new technique for relating scalar curvature bounds to the global structure of 3-dimensional manifolds, exploiting a relationship between the scalar curvature and the topology of level sets of harmonic functions. We will describe several geometric applications in both the compact and asymptotically flat settings, including a simple and effective new proof (joint with Bray, Kazaras, and Khuri) of the three-dimensional Riemannian positive mass theorem.