Mini-workshop: Singularities in \(G_2\)-geometry. Abstracts from the mini-workshop held February 8--14, 2015. (Q347246)

Summary: All currently known construction methods of smooth compact \(G_2\)-manifolds have been tied to certain singular \(G_2\)-spaces, which in Joyce's original construction are \(G_2\)-orbifolds and in Kovalev's twisted connected sum construction are complete \(G_2\)-manifolds with cylindrical ends. By a slight abuse of terminology we also refer to the latter as singular \(G_2\)-spaces, and in fact both construction methods may be viewed as desingularization procedures. In turn, singular \(G_2\)-spaces comprise a (conjecturally large) part of the boundary of the moduli space of smooth compact \(G_2\)-manifolds, and so their deformation theory is of considerable interest. Furthermore, singular \(G_2\)-spaces are also important in theoretical physics. Namely, in order to have realistic low-energy physics in M-theory, one needs compact singular \(G_2\)-spaces with both codimension 4 and 7 singularities according to Acharya and Witten. However, the existence of such singular \(G_2\)-spaces is unknown at present. The aim of this workshop was to bring reserachers from special holonomy geometry, geometric analysis and theoretical physics together to exchange ideas on these questions.