Conference: A Meeting on Poisson Geometry

This award provides support for a conference on Poisson geometry and representation theory to be held at Northwestern University on April 11-14, 2024. This conference series consists of regular meetings in North America of mathematicians interested in Poisson geometry and its applications, attracting leading experts and young researchers alike. The aim of the series is to promote interaction between mathematicians inspired by problems arising in physics, and physicists searching for new mathematical tools. The meetings also serve as a unique forum for junior mathematicians from all over the United States to learn about cutting edge developments in Poisson geometry and to disseminate their own research results in the field. Poisson geometry originated as the mathematical formulation of classical mechanics as the semiclassical limit of quantum mechanics. Its history began with classical work by Poisson, Hamilton, Jacobi, and Lie, developing into a separate field in its own right around 1980 via the work of Lichnerowicz and Weinstein. Today, Poisson geometry influences and is influenced by many adjacent areas of mathematics, including symplectic geometry, generalized complex geometry, Lie algebroids and Lie groupoids, geometric mechanics, cluster algebras, integrable systems, quantization, non-commutative geometry, stratification theory, and the geometry of singular symplectic and Poisson structures. The theme of the 2024 conference is the immensely rich connection between Poisson geometry and representation theory, which dates back to the original works of Sophus Lie on the realization of continuous symmetry groups by canonical transformations. The conference talks will make exciting recent developments in this area more accessible to Poisson geometers and representation theorists in the United States. The conference website is https://sites.northwestern.edu/gonefishing24/. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.