Geometry and Topology

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Biological Shape Analysis with Geometric Statistics and Learning

The advances in biomedical imaging techniques have enabled us to access the 3D shapes of a variety of structures: organs, cells, proteins. Since biological shapes are related to physiological functions, shape data may hold the key to unlocking outstanding mysteries in biomedicine. This snapshot introduces the mathematical framework of geometric statistics and learning and its applications to biomedicine.

Jewellery from tessellations of hyperbolic space

In this snapshot, we will first give an introduction to hyperbolic geometry and we will then show how certain matrix groups of a number-theoretic origin give rise to a large variety of interesting tessellations of 3-dimensional hyperbolic space. Many of the building blocks of these tessellations exhibit beautiful symmetry and have inspired the design of 3D printed jewellery.

Characterizations of intrinsic volumes on convex bodies and convex functions

If we want to express the size of a two-dimensional shape with a number, then we usually think about its area or circumference. But what makes these quantities so special? We give an answer to this question in terms of classical mathematical results. We also take a look at applications and new generalizations to the setting of functions.

Also available in German.

Closed geodesics on surfaces

We consider surfaces of three types: the sphere, the torus, and many-holed tori. These surfaces naturally admit geometries of positive, zero, and negative cur- vature, respectively. It is interesting to study straight line paths, known as geodesics, in these geometries. We discuss the issue of counting closed geodesics; this is particularly rich for hyperbolic (negatively curved) surfaces.

Zopfgruppen, die Yang–Baxter-Gleichung und Unterfaktoren

Die Yang–Baxter-Gleichung ist eine faszinierende Gleichung, die in vielen Gebieten der Physik und der Mathematik auftritt und die am besten diagrammatisch dargestellt wird. Dieser Snapshot schlägt einen weiten Bogen vom Zöpfeflechten über die Yang–Baxter-Gleichung bis hin zur aktuellen Forschung zu Systemen von unendlichdimensionalen Algebren, die wir „Unterfaktoren“ nennen.

Higgs bundles without geometry

Higgs bundles appeared a few decades ago as solutions to certain equations from physics and have attracted much attention in geometry as well as other areas of mathematics and physics. Here, we take a very informal stroll through some aspects of linear algebra that anticipate the deeper structure in the moduli space of Higgs bundles.

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