UBC Math Department Colloquium: Sebastien Picard

It was proposed in the works of Reid in the mathematics literature and Candelas-Green-Hubsch in the string theory literature to connect Calabi-Yau threefolds with different topologies by a process which degenerates 2-cycles and introduces new 3-cycles. This operation may connect a Kahler Calabi-Yau threefold to a non-Kahler complex manifold with trivial canonical bundle. In this talk, we will discuss the geometrization of this process by special non-Kahler metrics. We will survey joint works with T.C. Collins, B. Friedman, C. Suan, and S.-T. Yau.