Department Colloquium

Department of Mathematics
Princeton University



November 29th, 2000


Periodic Orbits, Holomorphic Curves and Algebraic Invariants


Gromov-Witten invariants are invariants of symplectic manifolds obtained by counting pseudoholomorphic curves. Cutting symplectic manifolds along hypersurfaces should give relative Gromov-Witten invariants with values in some algebraic object associated to the hypersurface. Symplectically a hypersurface is a Hamiltonian energy surface and its invariants have to be related to the underlying dynamics. The talk describes some aspects of the current research activities.