In mathematics, a Lagrangian foliation or polarization is a foliation of a symplectic manifold, whose leaves are Lagrangian submanifolds. It is one of the steps involved in the geometric quantization of a square-integrable functions on a symplectic manifold.
In differential geometry, a subject of mathematics, a symplectic manifold is a smooth manifold, , equipped with a closed nondegenerate differential 2-form , called the symplectic form. The study of symplectic manifolds is called symplectic geometry or symplectic topology. Symplectic manifolds arise naturally in abstract formulations of classical mechanics and analytical mechanics as the cotangent bundles of manifolds. For example, in the Hamiltonian formulation of classical mechanics, which provides one of the major motivations for the field, the set of all possible configurations of a system is modeled as a manifold, and this manifold's cotangent bundle describes the phase space of the system.
In mathematics, a symplectic vector space is a vector space V over a field F equipped with a symplectic bilinear form.
Symplectic geometry is a branch of differential geometry and differential topology that studies symplectic manifolds; that is, differentiable manifolds equipped with a closed, nondegenerate 2-form. Symplectic geometry has its origins in the Hamiltonian formulation of classical mechanics where the phase space of certain classical systems takes on the structure of a symplectic manifold.
In mathematics, a symplectomorphism or symplectic map is an isomorphism in the category of symplectic manifolds. In classical mechanics, a symplectomorphism represents a transformation of phase space that is volume-preserving and preserves the symplectic structure of phase space, and is called a canonical transformation.
In mathematics, contact geometry is the study of a geometric structure on smooth manifolds given by a hyperplane distribution in the tangent bundle satisfying a condition called 'complete non-integrability'. Equivalently, such a distribution may be given as the kernel of a differential one-form, and the non-integrability condition translates into a maximal non-degeneracy condition on the form. These conditions are opposite to two equivalent conditions for 'complete integrability' of a hyperplane distribution, i.e. that it be tangent to a codimension one foliation on the manifold, whose equivalence is the content of the Frobenius theorem.
In mathematics and classical mechanics, canonical coordinates are sets of coordinates on phase space which can be used to describe a physical system at any given point in time. Canonical coordinates are used in the Hamiltonian formulation of classical mechanics. A closely related concept also appears in quantum mechanics; see the Stone–von Neumann theorem and canonical commutation relations for details.
In differential geometry, a Poisson structure on a smooth manifold is a Lie bracket on the algebra of smooth functions on , subject to the Leibniz rule
In mathematical physics, geometric quantization is a mathematical approach to defining a quantum theory corresponding to a given classical theory. It attempts to carry out quantization, for which there is in general no exact recipe, in such a way that certain analogies between the classical theory and the quantum theory remain manifest. For example, the similarity between the Heisenberg equation in the Heisenberg picture of quantum mechanics and the Hamilton equation in classical physics should be built in.
In mathematics, integrability is a property of certain dynamical systems. While there are several distinct formal definitions, informally speaking, an integrable system is a dynamical system with sufficiently many conserved quantities, or first integrals, such that its behaviour has far fewer degrees of freedom than the dimensionality of its phase space; that is, its evolution is restricted to a submanifold within its phase space.
In mathematics, Floer homology is a tool for studying symplectic geometry and low-dimensional topology. Floer homology is a novel invariant that arises as an infinite-dimensional analogue of finite-dimensional Morse homology. Andreas Floer introduced the first version of Floer homology, now called Lagrangian Floer homology, in his proof of the Arnold conjecture in symplectic geometry. Floer also developed a closely related theory for Lagrangian submanifolds of a symplectic manifold. A third construction, also due to Floer, associates homology groups to closed three-dimensional manifolds using the Yang–Mills functional. These constructions and their descendants play a fundamental role in current investigations into the topology of symplectic and contact manifolds as well as (smooth) three- and four-dimensional manifolds.
In mathematics, the Lagrangian Grassmannian is the smooth manifold of Lagrangian subspaces of a real symplectic vector space V. Its dimension is 1/2n(n + 1). It may be identified with the homogeneous space
Alan David Weinstein is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, working in the field of differential geometry, and especially in Poisson geometry.
The Geometry Festival is an annual mathematics conference held in the United States.
In string theory and related theories such as supergravity theories, a brane is a physical object that generalizes the notion of a point particle to higher dimensions. Branes are dynamical objects which can propagate through spacetime according to the rules of quantum mechanics. They have mass and can have other attributes such as charge.
In symplectic topology, a Fukaya category of a symplectic manifold is a category whose objects are Lagrangian submanifolds of , and morphisms are Floer chain groups: . Its finer structure can be described in the language of quasi categories as an A∞-category.
Kenji Fukaya is a Japanese mathematician known for his work in symplectic geometry and Riemannian geometry. His many fundamental contributions to mathematics include the discovery of the Fukaya category. He is a permanent faculty member at the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics and a professor of mathematics at Stony Brook University.
In mathematics, Weinstein's symplectic category is (roughly) a category whose objects are symplectic manifolds and whose morphisms are canonical relations, inclusions of Lagrangian submanifolds L into , where the superscript minus means minus the given symplectic form. The notion was introduced by Alan Weinstein, according to whom "Quantization problems suggest that the category of symplectic manifolds and symplectomorphisms be augmented by the inclusion of canonical relations as morphisms." The composition of canonical relations is given by a fiber product.
This is a glossary of properties and concepts in symplectic geometry in mathematics. The terms listed here cover the occurrences of symplectic geometry both in topology as well as in algebraic geometry. The glossary also includes notions from Hamiltonian geometry, Poisson geometry and geometric quantization.
Kaoru Ono is a Japanese mathematician, specializing in symplectic geometry. He is a professor at the Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences (RIMS) at Kyoto University.
Ivan Smith is a British mathematician who deals with symplectic manifolds and their interaction with algebraic geometry, low-dimensional topology, and dynamics. He is a professor at the University of Cambridge.