3 ms·
What does string theory have to do with the proof of the Poincare conjecture? This is the first I've heard that there was any link there.
by osheamonn 8y ago
What does string theory have to do with the proof of the Poincare conjecture? This is the first I've heard that there was any link there.
- orbifold 8y agoThe starting point of Perelman's proof is the observation that (a modified version of) the Ricci flow is a gradient flow. The connection to 2d non-linear sigma models is briefly discussed in section 2 of the introduction in https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0211159.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0211159.pdf and section 1.4*. The overall intuition is that string theory captures the geometry of the back ground Riemannian manifold.