Caltech-Tsinghua Joint Colloquium

387 Linde Hall

Minimal surfaces are surfaces which locally minimize the area. They form a class of "optimal geometries" which appear in a multitude of situations in differential geometry. I will talk about my recent effort in studying the geometry of unitary representations using minimal surfaces. This investigation leads to a surprising connection between minimal surfaces, the hyperbolic plane and random matrices: there exists a sequence of closed minimal surfaces in Euclidean spheres, constructed from random permutations, which converges to the hyperbolic plane. After introducing and explaining this phenomenon, I will mention some general questions.

https://caltech.zoom.us/j/83185685455