In preparation for the forthcoming SFT IV workshop in Munich with lectures by Paul Seidel, we thought we'd have a pre-precourse here in Cambridge to make sure Will understood some of the basic ideas (like what a manifold is). We will meet once weekly in MR12 at 11am and run for an hour (or maybe a little longer).

Papers

We will be concentrating on:

• Vanishing Cycles and Mutation
• More About Vanishing Cycles and Mutation

• Symplectic Homology as Hochschild Homology
• "Fukaya Categories and Picard-Lefschetz Theory"

Schedule

First talk was given by Jonny to widespread acclaim. Now that Will is happy with the basic definition of a manifold, he will define Floer homology in the next talk. The plan is:

• Floer homology I (Will)
• Floer homology II (Richard)
• Mutations, twisted complexes and other algebra (Alex)
• Application to Fukaya categories (Jonny)

That covers all the material from the first vanishing cycles paper. The second paper is full of examples and conjectures and we can dip into that when we understand the first one properly.

Participants

• Jonny Evans
• Richard Harris
• Will Merry
• Alex Shannon
• Jack Waldron

Notes