Symmetry, Integrability and Geometry: Methods and Applications (SIGMA)

Proceedings of the 2007 Midwest Geometry Conference in honor of Thomas P. Branson (May 18−20, 2007, Iowa City, USA)

The Editors for this special issue are Michael Eastwood (University of Adelaide, Australia) and A. Rod Gover (University of Auckland, New Zealand)


The 17th Midwest Geometry Conference was held at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, during May 18th−20th 2007. This conference was dedicated to the memory of Professor Thomas Branson of the University of Iowa. He died suddenly at age 52 on March 11th, 2006. It was a great shock to all who knew him. Tom was very much involved in the organisation of the Midwest Geometry Conference Series. The 17th in the series was already scheduled to be held at the University of Iowa in 2007 with Tom as an organiser. The conference combined themes from geometry, physics and symmetry; this was consistent with Tom Branson's work, which was distinguished as a highly original blend of these three elements. SIGMA is pleased to publish the proceedings of MGC2007: Tom joined the Editorial Board of SIGMA in January 2006.

On behalf of the Conference Participants the editors would like to express deep gratitude for the tireless efforts of the conference organisers:

Main Organiser: Palle Jorgensen (University of Iowa).

Organizing Committee: Susanne Branson (University of Iowa), Oguz Durumeric (University of Iowa), Charles Frohman (University of Iowa), Doojin Hong (University of North Dakota), Tong Li (University of Iowa), Vincent Rodgers (University of Iowa), Walter Seaman (University of Iowa), Lihe Wang (University of Iowa).

Scientific Committee: Andrzej Derdzinski (Ohio State University), Michael Eastwood (University of Adelaide), A. Rod Gover (University of Auckland), Rafe Mazzeo (Stanford University), Gestur Ólafsson (Louisiana State University), Lawrence Peterson (University of North Dakota), Shihshu Walter Wei (University of Oklahoma).

Sponsors: The organisers were most grateful for financial support from: the National Science Foundation, the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications at the University of Minnesota, the University of Iowa, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Mathematics @ Iowa.

                                      April 02, 2008             The Editors         

Papers in this Issue:

The Research of Thomas P. Branson
Michael G. Eastwood and A. Rod Gover
SIGMA 4 (2008), 037,  7 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

A Quartic Conformally Covariant Differential Operator for Arbitrary Pseudo-Riemannian Manifolds (Summary)
Stephen M. Paneitz
SIGMA 4 (2008), 036,  3 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

Branching Laws for Some Unitary Representations of SL(4,R)
Bent Ørsted and Birgit Speh
SIGMA 4 (2008), 017, 19 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

Poisson Manifolds, Lie Algebroids, Modular Classes: a Survey
Yvette Kosmann-Schwarzbach
SIGMA 4 (2008), 005, 30 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

On 1-Harmonic Functions
Shihshu Walter Wei
SIGMA 3 (2007), 127, 10 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

Some Progress in Conformal Geometry
Sun-Yung A. Chang, Jie Qing and Paul Yang
SIGMA 3 (2007), 122, 17 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

Conformal Powers of the Laplacian via Stereographic Projection
C. Robin Graham
SIGMA 3 (2007), 121,  4 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

Conformal Metrics with Constant Q-Curvature
Andrea Malchiodi
SIGMA 3 (2007), 120, 11 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

Branson's Q-curvature in Riemannian and Spin Geometry
Oussama Hijazi and Simon Raulot
SIGMA 3 (2007), 119, 11 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

On Gauss-Bonnet Curvatures
Mohammed Larbi Labbi
SIGMA 3 (2007), 118, 11 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

Some Sharp L2 Inequalities for Dirac Type Operators
Alexander Balinsky and John Ryan
SIGMA 3 (2007), 114, 10 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

Curved Casimir Operators and the BGG Machinery
Andreas Cap and Vladimír Soucek
SIGMA 3 (2007), 111, 17 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

Biorthogonal Expansion of Non-Symmetric Jack Functions
Siddhartha Sahi and Genkai Zhang
SIGMA 3 (2007), 106,  9 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

Some Conformal Invariants from the Noncommutative Residue for Manifolds with Boundary
William J. Ugalde
SIGMA 3 (2007), 104, 18 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

Translation to Bundle Operators
Thomas P. Branson and Doojin Hong
SIGMA 3 (2007), 102, 14 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

Toeplitz Operators, Kähler Manifolds, and Line Bundles
Tatyana Foth
SIGMA 3 (2007), 101,  6 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

Conformal Dirichlet-Neumann Maps and Poincaré-Einstein Manifolds
A. Rod Gover
SIGMA 3 (2007), 100, 21 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

Quantum Gravity: Unification of Principles and Interactions, and Promises of Spectral Geometry
Bernhelm Booß-Bavnbek, Giampiero Esposito and Matthias Lesch
SIGMA 3 (2007), 098, 29 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

Differential Invariants of Conformal and Projective Surfaces
Evelyne Hubert and Peter J. Olver
SIGMA 3 (2007), 097, 15 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

Stanilov-Tsankov-Videv Theory
Miguel Brozos-Vázquez, Bernd Fiedler, Eduardo García-Río, Peter Gilkey, Stana Nikcevic, Grozio Stanilov, Yulian Tsankov, Ramón Vázquez-Lorenzo and Veselin Videv
SIGMA 3 (2007), 095, 13 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

Vacuum Energy as Spectral Geometry
Stephen A. Fulling
SIGMA 3 (2007), 094, 23 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

Heat Trace Asymptotics on Noncommutative Spaces
Dmitri V. Vassilevich
SIGMA 3 (2007), 093, 11 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

Q-Curvature, Spectral Invariants, and Representation Theory
Thomas P. Branson
SIGMA 3 (2007), 090, 31 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

The Symmetric Tensor Lichnerowicz Algebra and a Novel Associative Fourier-Jacobi Algebra
Karl Hallowell and Andrew Waldron
SIGMA 3 (2007), 089, 12 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

Monogenic Functions in Conformal Geometry
Michael Eastwood and John Ryan
SIGMA 3 (2007), 084, 14 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

Future Directions of Research in Geometry: A Summary of the Panel Discussion at the 2007 Midwest Geometry Conference
Edited by Lawrence J. Peterson
SIGMA 3 (2007), 081,  7 pages   [ abs   pdf   ps ]

Back to the SIGMA main page.