Speaker: Spiro Karigiannis, University of Waterloo

Title: The geometry of G2 manifolds: a marriage of non-associative algebra and non-linear analysis

Abstract: I will spend the first part of the talk giving a gentle introduction to G2 manifolds, with a special emphasis on their similarities and differences with Kahler manifolds. In the second part, I will focus on some recent work with Daren Cheng (Miami) and Jesse Madnick (Oregon) on the analytic properties of a special class of maps into G2 manifolds, which are analogues of J-holomorphic maps in Kahler geometry. The talk should be accessible to a general mathematical audience.