This talk will introduce modern ideas in the calculus of variations, with motivation coming from physics. Topics I hope to cover are jet bundles, the variational bicomplex, and Noether's theorem. This general formalism was developed by Takens and others in the 1970s and 80s.
Graduate Student Geometry-Topology Seminar
Wednesday, March 20, 2013 - 2:00pm
Ben Albert
University of Pennsylvania