Prof. Dr. Burkhard Wilking, Mathematisches Institut

The question of how far geometric properties of a manifold determine its global topology is a classical problem in global differential geometry. Building on recent breakthroughs we investigate this problem for positively curved manifolds with torus symmetry. We also want to complete the classification of positively curved cohomogeneity one manifolds and obtain structure results for the fundamental groups of nonnegatively curved manifolds. Other goals include structure results for singular Riemannian foliations in nonnegative curvature and a differentiable diameter pinching theorem.

Hamilton's Ricci flow is a (weakly parabolic) geometric evolution equation, which deforms a given Riemannian metric in its most natural direction. Over the last decades, it has been used to prove several significant conjectures in Riemannian geometry and topology (in dimension three). In this project we focus on Ricci flow in higher dimensions, in particular on heat flow methods, new Ricci flow invariant curvature conditions and the dynamical Alekseevskii conjecture.