How to Find Periodic Orbits and Exotic Symplectic Manifolds

Members Seminar
Topic:	How to Find Periodic Orbits and Exotic Symplectic Manifolds
Speaker:	Mark McLean
Affiliation:	Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Member, School of Mathematics
Date:	Monday, October 15
Time/Room:	2:00pm - 3:00pm/S-101

---

I will give an introduction to symplectic geometry and Hamiltonian systems and then introduce an invariant called symplectic cohomology. This has many applications in symplectic geometry and has been used a lot especially in the last 5-10 years. I will explain some basic properties of this invariant and how it can be used to find periodic orbits of a Hamiltonian system. I will also explain how this invariant can be used to distinguish symplectic manifolds