Speaker
Shing-Tung Yau
(Harvard)
Description
Period integrals are transcendental objects that play a central role in the study of algebraic manifolds. They describe deformations of the manifold, among other things, and were originally studied by Euler, Gauss, and Riemann. In recent time, they also turn out to be very important in topological field theories, and in particular mirror symmetry. In this talk, we explain a recent method to study period integrals through differential equations, and describe a few applications including the resolution of some open issues.
