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Differential Topology

For doctoral students; Semester 2, Thu. Period 3 · Graduate School of Science and Technology, Niigata University

Syllabus

Note

This course is held online via Zoom.

Textbooks

John W. Milnor, “Morse Theory”, Princeton University Press

Course contents

  1. Covariant differentiation, part 1
  2. Covariant differentiation, part 2
  3. The curvature tensor
  4. Geodesics and completeness, part 1
  5. Geodesics and completeness, part 2
  6. Geodesics and completeness, part 3
  7. The path space of a smooth manifold
  8. The energy of a path
  9. The Hessian of the energy function at critical paths
  10. Jacobi fields: the null space of $\mathrm{Hess}_{\gamma}(E)$, part 1
  11. Jacobi fields: the null space of $\mathrm{Hess}_{\gamma}(E)$, part 2; the index theorem, part 1
  12. The index theorem, part 2
  13. A finite-dimensional approximation to $\Omega^c$, part 1
  14. A finite-dimensional approximation to $\Omega^c$, part 2; the topology of the full path space, part 1
  15. The topology of the full path space, part 2
  16. Existence of non-conjugate points
  17. Some relations between topology and curvature, part 1
  18. Some relations between topology and curvature, part 2