Harmonic maps into G2/SO(4) and their twistor lifts
- Date: Wednesday 26 July 2017, 15:00 – 16:30
- Location: Roger Stevens LT 12 (10M.12)
- Type: Geometry, Seminars, Pure Mathematics
- Cost: Free
Martin Svensson, University of Southern Denmark. Part of the geometry seminar series.
Burstall and Rawnsley have shown how the canonically fibered flag manifolds sit inside the twistor space of a compact, simply connected inner Riemannian symmetric space. It is known that a harmonic map from a surface into an inner Riemannian symmetric space of classical type has a twistor lift into such a flag manifold if and only if it is nilconformal in the sense that its derivative is nilpotent. In this talk, I will show that this result can be generalised to harmonic maps into the exceptional inner symmetric space $G_2/SO(4)$. I will describe the structure of the canonically fibered flag manifolds over this space and the construction of the twistor lifts of nilconformal harmonic maps. I will also show how almost complex maps into $S^6$ can be used to construct harmonic maps into $G_2/SO(4)$. The talk will be based on joint work with John C. Wood.
Martin Svensson, University of Southern Denmark