Topology Seminar: Jeff Danciger (UT Austin), 'Moduli spaces of constant curvature spacetimes'

Event Date: 

Tuesday, November 12, 2013 - 3:30pm to 4:30pm

Event Location: 

  • 4607B South Hall

Event Contact: 

Daryl Cooper

Email: cooper@math.ucsb.edu

A Margulis spacetime is the quotient of three-dimensional space by a free group of affine transformations acting properly discontinuously. Each of these manifolds is equipped with a flat Lorentzian metric compatible with the affine structure. I will survey some recent results, joint with Francois Gueritaud and Fanny Kassel, about the geometry, topology, and deformation theory of these flat spacetimes. In particular, we give a parameterization of the moduli space in the same spirit as Penner's cell decomposition of the decorated Teichmuller space of a punctured surface. I will also discuss connections with the negative curvature (AdS geometry) setting.