We begin by discussing the natural diffusion associated to mean curvature flow and work of Soner and Touzi showing that, in Euclidean space, this stochastic structure allows one to reformulate mean curvature flow as the solution to a type of stochastic target problem. Then we describe work with Ionel Popescu adapting the target problem formulation to Ricci flow on compact surfaces and using the accompanying diffusion to understand the convergence of the normalized Ricci flow. We aim to avoid being overly technical, instead focusing on the ideas underlying the appearance of stochastic objects in the context of curvature flow.

In 2011 J.Streets and G.Tian introduced a family of metric flows over a complex Hermitian manifold. We consider one particular member of this family and prove that if the initial metric has Griffiths positive Chern curvature, then this property is preserved along the flow.  On a manifold with Griffiths non-negative Chern curvature this flow has nice regularization properties, in particular, for any t>0 the zero set of Chern curvature becomes invariant under certain torsion-twisted parallel transport. If time permits, we discuss applications of the results to some uniformization problems.

Given a compact Riemannian manifold with nonnegative Ricci curvature and convex boundary, it is interesting to estimate its size in terms of the volume, the area of its boundary etc.  I will discuss some open problems and present some partial results.

Joint Seminar with Analysis.

Abstract:
Self-expanding solutions of curvature flows evolve by homothetic expansions under the flow. Rotational symmetric examples are constructed by Ecker-Huisken, Angenent-Chopp-Ilmanen, Helmensdorfer et. al for the Mean Curvature Flow, and by Huisken-Ilmanen, Grugan-Lee-Wheeler et. al for the Inverse Mean Curvature Flow. Many known examples are asymptotic to some standard models such as round cylinders and round cones. In this talk, the speaker will talk about rotational rigidity results for self-expanders of both Mean Curvature and Inverse Mean Curvature Flows, proving that certain self-expanders asymptotic to cones or cylinders are necessarily rotational symmetric. These are joint works with Peter McGrath, and with Gregory Drugan and Hojoo Lee.

Program

3:00-3:50pm  APM 7421 

Ovidiu Munteanu (Univ. of Connecticut)  ``Poisson equation on complete manifolds''

Abstract: I will discuss sharp estimates for the Green's function on
complete manifolds and their applications to solving the Poisson
equation. I will mention new sharp results about existence of
solutions and their asymptotic behavior. Some new results
about gradient Ricci solitons will be presented as application.

4:00-4:50pm  APM 2402  

Jacob Bernstein (Johns Hopkins)  ``Surfaces of Low Entropy''

Abstract: Following Colding and Minicozzi, we consider the entropy of
(hyper)-surfaces in Euclidean space.  This is a numerical measure of
the geometric complexity of the surface.  In addition, this quantity
is intimately tied to to the singularity formation of the mean
curvature flow which is a natural geometric heat flow of
submanifolds.  In the talk, I will discuss several results that show
that closed surfaces for which the entropy is small are simple in
various senses.  This is all joint work with L. Wang.