Presenter: Professor Xianzhe Dai, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA

By conical degeneration we mean a family of smooth Riemannian manifolds degenerating into a singular Riemannian manifold with singularity of conical type. This type of singular limit appears quite often.

We look at the special case when a K3 surface degenerates into an orbifold and study the limiting behavior of certain geometric invariants defined in terms of the heat kernels. As an application we find remarkable connection between these geometric invariants and certain modular forms of Borcherds. This is joint work with Ken-Ichi Yoshikawa.

About Pure mathematics seminars

We present regular seminars on a range of pure mathematics interests. Students, staff and visitors to UQ are welcome to attend, and to suggest speakers and topics.

Seminars are usually held on Tuesdays from 2 to 3pm.

Talks comprise 45 minutes of speaking time plus five minutes for questions and discussion.

Information for speakers

Researchers in all pure mathematics fields attend our seminars, so please aim your presentation at a general mathematical audience.

Contact us

To volunteer to talk or to suggest a speaker, email Ole Warnaar or Ramiro Lafuente.

Venue

Priestley Building (67)
Room: 
442