Special Metrics and Group Actions in Geometry

The volume is a follow-up to the INdAM meeting “Special metrics and quaternionic geometry” held in Rome in November 2015. It offers a panoramic view of a selection of cutting-edge topics in differential geometry, including 4-manifolds, quaternionic and octonionic geometry, twistor spaces, harmonic maps, spinors, complex and conformal geometry, homogeneous spaces and nilmanifolds, special geometries in dimensions 5–8, gauge theory, symplectic and toric manifolds, exceptional holonomy and integrable systems. The workshop was held in honor of Simon Salamon, a leading international scholar at the forefront of academic research who has made significant contributions to all these subjects. The articles published here represent a compelling testimony to Salamon’s profound and longstanding impact on the mathematical community. Target readership includes graduate students and researchers working in Riemannian and complex geometry, Lie theory and mathematical physics.

Prof. Simon Chiossi is a lecturer at Universidade Federal Fluminense, and previously held posts in Odense, Berlin, Torino, Marburg and Salvador. He was awarded a PhD in mathematics from the University of Genoa in 2003, and his scholarly publications focus on special geometry in dimensions 4 to 8.

Prof. Anna Fino is currently a full professor at the University of Torino, where she also received her Ph.D. in Mathematics. Her research work mainly focuses on differential geometry, complex geometry, Lie groups, more specifically, Hermitian geometry, G-structures and special holonomy, and geometric flows. She has supervised three doctoral theses and she is author of 72 papers.

Prof. Fabio Podesta studied mathematics at the University of Pisa and at the Scuola Normale Superiore, where he attended the Corso di Perfezionamento in Mathematics. He is currently a full professor at the University of Florence. His research activity in the field of differential geometry mainly concerns Lie group actions preserving geometric structures. He is author of more than 50 published papers.

Prof. Emilio Musso obtained his Ph.D. in mathematics at the Washington University in St. Louisin 1987. He taught at the Universities of Florence, L’Aquila and Rome in Italy. Currently he is a professor of mathematics at the Politecnico di Torino. He has published 60 papers and one book on several topics in differential geometry. His research interests are in geometrical variational problems, exterior differential systems and in the interrelations between geometry, physics and integrable systems.

Prof. Luigi Vezzoni graduated in mathematics at the University of Florence in 2003, and received his Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Pisa in 2007. He is currently an associate professor at the University of Turin. He is author of more than 40 papers in international journals and he was the main speaker at a number of international conferences including conferences in Brazil, Japan, China, Luxembourg, Germany and Bulgaria. He has also supervised several master’s theses and he is currently supervising a Ph.D. thesis. His current research interests include complex geometry, special geometric structures on smooth manifolds, geometric flows and geometric analysis.