A conference entitled "Mirror Symmetry in the Midwest" will be held November 3-6 at Kansas State University. Mirror symmetry is an exciting and rapidly developing field that is concerned with duality between the complex and symplectic geometry of certain Calabi-Yau manifolds. The search for the underlying principles at work in mirror symmetry has driven a great deal of the research in symplectic and complex/algebraic geometry over the past two decades. Many of the ideas and techniques used to study mirror symmetry have become interesting areas of research in their own right. Examples include Gromov-Witten theory, Floer theory, Fukaya categories, derived categories, Lagrangian torus fibrations, special Lagrangian geometry, Donaldson-Thomas invariants, and tropical geometry. The breadth of ideas involved and number of approaches to the subject make it fertile ground for collaboration. The conference will exploit this by bringing together researchers studying a wide variety of the geometric and algebraic aspects of mirror symmetry.
The goal of the conference is to advance mirror symmetry by opening and strengthening lines of communications between researchers, finding areas for collaboration, and educating participants. The conference will have several important features in order to achieve these goals. To further the educational aims, the conference will feature a mini-course designed to educate participants on a particular topic at a high but non-expert level. The mini-course will be useful to graduate students as well as to more senior participants, both as an educational experience and as an opportunity to find areas for collaboration. There will be a poster session that will allow graduate students to show off their work. This will provide an opportunity for young researchers to communicate with more senior researchers and will provide an excellent opportunity for the transfer of knowledge. The conference will feature participants who are experts in both geometric and algebraic aspects of mirror symmetry and thus will provide an opportunity to find ways to integrate diverse ideas. Finally, mirror symmetry has its roots in string theory and high energy physics and today is an important branch of theoretical physics. The conference will increase communication between mathematicians and physicists by inviting both types of people to attend. More information can be found on the conference website: www.math.ksu.edu/~galston/conference/
This project was for a math conference entitled "Mirror Symmetry in the Midwest". The conference was held at Kansas State University from November 3-6, 2011. Mirror Symmetry is a branch of mathematics that explores connections between algebraic geometry and symplectic geometry. Both of these subjects have a long and distinguished history in math and have many important applications to science. For example, symplectic geometry has its roots in classical mechanics. Mirror symmetry deals with the mathematics behind string theory and quantum field theory, which are key topics in modern physics. The conference brought together several experts on mirror symmetry, as well as many younger researchers, including students. The conference featured sixteen talks on a variety of aspects of mirror symmetry. Three of the talks were given by Andrew Neitzke from the University of Texas. Neitzke presented an extended introduction to his exciting new research on hyperkahler metrics. The primary benefit of the conference was education. Participants learned about new research through the talks, and in interactions with each other were able to explore connections between their research and that of others. There was also a poster session for graduate students to present their work. This led to meaningul interactions between young and senior participants.
