Clifford Conference in Gauge Theory and Low Dimensional Topology

小行星9704424 该奖项是提供部分支持为期一周的会议在规范理论和低维拓扑在杜兰大学在1997年秋季学期。 该会议将与今年由Peter Kronheimer举办的年度Clifford Lectures一起举行。 规范理论是近年来低维拓扑学取得巨大进展的源泉，克朗海默和托马斯·姆洛卡的工作是基础性的，特别是他们对托姆猜想的解决。 这一领域的其他十几个重要贡献者将举行重要会谈，另外一些较短的会谈将使该计划更加完善。 尽管我们生活在一个三个空间维度和一个时间维度的宇宙中，并且拥有这种经验提供给我们的所有直觉，但三维和四维物体仍然非常难以完全理解。 事实上，数学家们发现，在某些方面，高维空间更容易处理，而在高维空间中可用的一些分析工具不能在三维和四维空间中使用。 这就意味着，在这些所谓的低维情况下，其他的方法是非常重要的，这也是为什么规范理论方法如此重要的原因。规范理论方法首先是由西蒙·唐纳森提出的，最近又被内森·塞伯格和爱德华·维滕惊人地简化了。 ***

9704424 Lawson This award is to provide partial support for a week long conference in gauge theory and low dimensional topology at Tulane University in the fall semester of 1997. The conference will be held in conjunction with the annual Clifford Lectures, given this year by Peter Kronheimer. Gauge theory has been the source of dramatic advances in low dimensional topology in recent years, and the work of Kronheimer and Tomasz Mrowka has been fundamental, particularly their settling of the Thom conjecture. A dozen other significant contributors to this area will give major talks, and additional shorter talks will round out the program. Despite the fact that we live in a universe of three spatial dimensions and one time dimension and have available all the intuition that this experience provides us, three and four dimensional objects have remained remarkably resistant to full understanding. In fact, mathematicians have found that in some respects higher dimensional spaces are more tractable, whereas some of the analytic tools available in higher dimensions cannot be used in dimensions three and four. This means that other methods that will apply in these so-called low dimensions are at a premium and is what makes so important the gauge theoretic methods first introduced by Simon Donaldson and more recently strikingly simplified by Nathan Seiberg and Edward Witten. ***