No label defined (Q4452869)

The subject of Sevenheck's book is how Lagrangian singularities behave under deformations. These include not only deformations of the symplectic structure which fixes the Lagrangian subspace but also deformations of the underlying space itself. The appropriate setting for dealing with these deformations is abstract deformation theory. The author presents a rather general Lagrangian deformation functor, defines a Lagrangian de Rham complex and proves that the first cohomology of this complex is isomorphic to the tangent space to the deformation functor. Similar ideas are applied to deformations of isotropic mappings, but in this case the results are not so general, due to the lack of an appropriate rigidity theorem. The thesis is organized as follows: The first chapter describes the geometry of different classes of Lagrangian singularities. These are the open swallowtails, conormal cones, singularities in integrable systems, the \(\mu / 2\)-stratum, Frobenius manifolds and special Lagrangian singularities. For each class a concrete example is given. In the second chapter, the notion of Lagrangian deformation is presented. Two classical examples are given: the case of smooth Lagrangian submanifolds of a real \(C^\infty\)-manifold, and the case of germs of plane curves. These are used to motivate the introduction of a Lagrangian deformation functor, which is defined at the end of the chapter. Chapter 3 contains the main results. It starts with an introduction to Lie algebroids and modules over Lie algebroids. The de Rham complex of a module over a Lie algebroid is defined. It is shown that the conormal module of a Lagrangian subvariety has the structure of a Lie algebroid. General properties of the Lagrangian de Rham complex are discussed and it is proven that the first cohomology of the Lagrangian de Rham complex is isomorphic to the tangent space of the deformation functor. A variant of the \(T^1\)-lifting theorem is proven. In some cases this guarantees smoothness of the deformation functors. A slightly modified deformation problem concerning integrable systems is discussed and it is proven that, in this case, it is possible to use the Lagrangian de Rham complex to construct a differential graded Lie algebra controlling the deformations. The method to compute the cohomology of the Lagrangian de Rham complex for a quasi-homogeneous surface is presented. Some conjectures about symmetry of spectral numbers are presented. Chapter 4 deals with isotropic mappings. The image of these maps are Lagrangian singularities but the deformation theory for the mappings differs from the theory describing deformations of it's images. General results similar to those presented in Chapter 3 do not hold in this case due to the lack of an appropriate rigidity theorem. Some basic properties of deformation spaces of isotropic mappings are discussed. More advanced discussion is centered on the case of the open Whitney umbrella. The book contains two appendixes: Appendix A.1 is an overview of abstract deformation theory. It also contains some examples of construction of differential graded Lie algebras controlling deformations. Appendix A.2 is an introduction to differential modules.