
Symplectic Excision and Distance Rigidity
Yoel Groman, of the Einstein Institute of Mathematics at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, presents this research talk in the joint IAS/Princeton/Montreal/Paris/Tel-Aviv Symplectic Geometry Zoominar series. He examines symplectic manifolds that are tame at infinity, meaning they admit a compatible almost complex structure whose Riemannian metric is complete and geometrically bounded, a condition needed to confine J-holomorphic curves of finite area. Groman shows this strict condition can be relaxed to a weaker contractibility requirement while preserving the same confinement, then asks what geometric features such almost complex structures share, approaching the question through distances between subsets of the manifold. He contrasts rigidity phenomena that appear when excising symplectic hypersurfaces with the flexibility that often arises when the excised set is coisotropic instead. The talk runs 65 minutes and assumes graduate-level familiarity with symplectic topology and holomorphic curve theory, aimed at researchers following current work in the field.