EVENT DETAILS AND ABSTRACT

Title: Blow-up phenomena for the Yamabe equation
Speaker: Simon Brendle
Speaker Info: Stanford University
Brief Description:
Special Note:
Abstract:

Abstract: The Yamabe problem asserts that any Riemannian metric on a compact manifold can be conformally deformed to one of constant scalar curvature. However, this metric is not, in general, unique, and there are examples of manifolds that admit many metrics of constant scalar curvature in a given conformal class.

It was conjectured by R. Schoen in the 1980s (and later by Aubin) that the set of all metrics of constant scalar curvature 1 in a given conformal class is compact, except if the underlying manifold is conformally equivalent to the sphere $S^n$ equipped with its standard metric.

I will discuss counterexamples to this conjecture in dimension 52 and higher. I will also describe joint work with F. Marques, which extends these counterexamples to dimension 25 and higher. The condition $n \geq 25$ turns out to be optimal.