Math 242: Symplectic geometry

UC Berkeley, Spring 2009

Instructor

Michael Hutchings. [My last name with the last letter removed]@math.berkeley.edu Tentative office hours: Tuesday 2:00-4:00, 923 Evans.

Textbooks

The main text for this course is Introduction to symplectic topology, 2nd edition, by McDuff and Salamon. Much of what we will discuss is covered in this book, although I will not follow it closely and will give additional references as we go along. For the last part of the course, An introduction to contact topology by Geiges is a good reference.

Course outline

The rough plan for the course is to discuss the following topics (not necessarily in linear order):

This course should hopefully provide good preparation for the program on Symplectic and Contact Geometry and Topology at MSRI from August 2009 to May 2010.

Final project

Each student is expected to research a topic of interest and either write a 5-10 page expository article about it, or give a short presentation to the class. The articles will be posted here (if I am given permission). The books by McDuff-Salamon and Geiges suggest a number of good starting points with many references. I can give more references. (Since McDuff-Salamon is a few years old, it does not cite the latest works.)

Lecture summaries and references