BIRS Workshop — A Unified View of Quasi-Einstein Manifolds

Soon after Einstein postulated the General Theory of Relativity, he introduced what he called his "greatest mistake'', the so-called cosmological constant. Solutions of the Einstein equation with cosmological constant are now called Einstein manifolds, and despite Einstein's pessimistic view, play key roles both in mathematics and physics. Quasi-Einstein manifolds are generalizations of Einstein manifolds, which include not only Einstein manifolds but Ricci solitons, warped product Einstein manifolds, static Einstein manifolds, and other special manifolds. These are important in many areas of modern mathematical research, including Ricci flow, collapsed Gromov-Hausdorff limits, and general relativity. This workshop will examine progress in seemingly disparate fields which in fact share a common nexus, namely quasi-Einstein manifolds or the related notion of Bakry-Emery Ricci curvature. Problems to be discussed include the classification problem for near horizon geometries (of black holes), for Ricci solitons and for static Einstein metrics, as well as the fundamental gap problem for Laplace and Schroedinger operators, and the formulation and application of synthetic Bakry-Emery Ricci curvature.