Speaker: Bruce Kleiner

Title: Ricci flow, diffeomorphism groups, and contractibility of spaces of metrics

Abstract: In the lecture I will discuss recent joint work with Richard Bamler, which uses Ricci flow through singularities to construct deformations of spaces of metrics on 3-manifolds. We show that the space of metrics with positive scalar on any 3-manifold is either contractible or empty; this extends earlier work by Fernando Marques, which proved path-connectedness. We also show that for any spherical space form M, the space of metrics with constant sectional curvature is contractible. This completes the proof of the Generalized Smale Conjecture, and gives a new proof of the original Smale Conjecture for $S^3$.