Contact Geometry, General Relativity and Thermodynamics: February 9 – March 20, 2026

Participant ListView Videos

Organized by:
Alberto Abbondandolo (Bochum)
Mohammed Abouzaid (Stanford)
Vladimir Chernov (Dartmouth)
Leonid Polterovich (Tel Aviv)
Stefan Suhr (Bochum)

The primary goal of this program is to investigate the causal structure on the space of Legendrian submanifolds—an emerging area of “hard” contact topology with deep connections to Riemannian and Lorentzian geometries, contact Hamiltonian dynamics, and Hofer-type geometry. This space is primarily studied through various flavors of Legendrian Contact Homology, a sophisticated algebraic invariant of Floer-theoretic nature, intricately linked to contact Hamiltonian dynamics and, in particular, to Reeb chords connecting Legendrian submanifolds.

Another central theme of the program is the interaction between contact topology and two areas of mathematical physics: General Relativity and Thermodynamics, with the causal structure providing a unifying framework.

WEEK 1: February 9 – 13, 2026

Wednesday 2/11/26 11:15AM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: Michael Entov (Technion),
Title: Mini Course: Filtered Legendrian contact homology and contact dynamics Part 1

Thursday 2/12/26 11:15AM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: Michael Entov (Technion),
Title: Mini Course: Filtered Legendrian contact homology and contact dynamics Part 2

Thursday 2/12/26 2:00 PM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: Alessandro Bravetti (University of Camerino)
Title: Contact Hamiltonian Systems: from mechanics to thermodynamics and more

Friday 2/13/26 11:15AM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: Michael Entov (Technion),
Title: Mini Course: Filtered Legendrian contact homology and contact dynamics Part 3

Friday 2/13/26 2:00 PM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: Dimitroglou Rizell (Uppsala University)
Title: A survey of quantitative results for Legendrian submanifolds

Week 1 Abstracts

WEEK 2: February 16 – 20, 2026

Monday 2/16/26 11:15 AM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: Michael Entov (Technion),
Title: Mini Course: Filtered Legendrian contact homology and contact dynamics Part IV

Tuesday 2/17/26 11:15 AM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: Leonid Polterovich (Tel Aviv University)
Title: Mini Course: Contact Topology meets Thermodynamics Part I

Wednesday 2/18/26 11:15 AM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: Miguel Sanchez Caja (University of Granada)
Title: Mini Course: Lorentz–Finsler Geometry and its Applications Part I

Wednesday 2/18/26 2:00 PM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: Eric Kilgore (University of Southern California)
Title: A Legendrian non-squeezing phenomenon

Thursday 2/19/26 11:15AM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: Miguel Sanchez Caja (University of Granada)
Title: Mini Course: Lorentz–Finsler Geometry and its Applications Part II

Thursday 2/19/26 2:00 PM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: Leonid Polterovich (Tel Aviv University)
Title: Mini Course: Contact Topology meets Thermodynamics Part II

Friday 2/20/26 11:15 AM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: Miguel Sanchez Caja (University of Granada)
Title: Mini Course: Lorentz–Finsler Geometry and its Applications Part III

Week 2 Abstracts

WEEK 3: February 23 – 27, 2026

Monday 2/23/26 11:15AM – Seminar Room – 313
CAMPUS CLOSED DUE TO WEATHER

Tuesday 2/24/26 11:15 AM – ZOOM
Speaker: David Sloan (Lancaster University)
Title: Contact Systems in Physics

Wednesday 2/25/26 11:15AM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: Vladimir Chernov (Dartmouth)
Title: Mini Course: Contact Geometry, Causality and Smooth Structures on spacetimes Part 1

Wednesday 2/25/26 1:30PM – Lecture hall– 102
Speaker: Dylan Cant (University of Montreal)
Title: Mini Course: Orderability and spectral geometries via contact Floer cohomology for quotient spaces Part I

Thursday 2/26/26 10:00AM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: Dylan Cant (University of Montreal)
Title: Mini Course: Orderability and spectral geometries via contact Floer cohomology for quotient spaces Part II

Thursday 2/26/26 11:15AM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: Dylan Cant (University of Montreal)
Title: Mini Course: Orderability and spectral geometries via contact Floer cohomology for quotient spaces Part III

Thursday 2/26/26 2:00 PM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: Vladimir Chernov (Dartmouth)
Title: Mini Course: Contact Geometry, Causality and Smooth Structures on spacetimes Part II

Friday 2/27/26 11:15 AM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: Vladimir Chernov (Dartmouth)
Title: Mini Course: Contact Geometry, Causality and Smooth Structures on spacetimes Part III

Friday 2/27/26 2:00 PM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: Jakob Hedicke
Title: TBA

Week 3 Abstracts

WEEK 5: March 9 – 13, 2026

Tuesday 3/10/26 10:00AM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: Egor Shelukhin (University of Montreal)
Title: Mini Course:

Tuesday 3/10/26 11:15AM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: Egor Shelukhin (University of Montreal)
Title: Mini Course:

Wednesday 3/11/26 11:15 AM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: TBA
Title: TBA

Thursday 3/12/26 11:15 AM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: TBA
Title: TBA

Friday 3/13/26 11:15 AM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: TBA
Title: TBA

Friday 3/13/26 2:00 PM – Seminar Room – 313
Speaker: TBA
Title: TBA