Gravitational instantons and harmonic maps.
Speaker:
Mingyang Li (Simons Center for Geometry and Physics)
Date and Time:
Thursday, October 9, 2025 - 3:30pm to 4:30pm
Location:
Fields Institute, Room 309, Stewart Library
Abstract:
It is known from general relativity that axisymmetric stationary black holes can be reduced to axisymmetric harmonic maps into the hyperbolic plane $H^2$, while in the Riemannian setting, 4d Ricci-flat metrics with torus symmetry can also be locally reduced to such harmonic maps satisfying a tameness condition. We study such harmonic maps. Applications include a construction of infinitely many new families of complete, asymptotically flat, Ricci-flat 4-manifolds with arbitrarily large $b_2$. Joint work with Song Sun.