Flowing to minimal surfaces
- Date: Wednesday 31 January 2018, 15:00 – 16:00
- Location: Roger Stevens LT 12 (10M.12)
- Type: Geometry, Seminars, Pure Mathematics
- Cost: Free
Melanie Rupflin, University of Oxford. Part of geometry seminar series.
For maps from surfaces there is a close connection between the area functional and Dirichlet energy and thus also between their critical points. As such, one way to try to find minimal surfaces is to consider a gradient flow of the Dirichlet energy, which not only evolves a map but also the domain metric in order to find a map that is not only harmonic but also (weakly) conformal and thus a (branched) minimal immersion. In this talk I will discuss the construction of such a flow, the Teichmueller harmonic map flow, and explain in particular how this flow decomposes any given initial map from a closed surface into minimal surfaces. This is joint work with Peter Topping.