Minimal surfaces in spheres and random permutations

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Antoine Song, Caltech
Fine Hall 314

Minimal surfaces in spheres, which are invariant by a group of symmetries, are closely related to group theory, hyperbolic geometry and representation theory. In this talk, I will discuss a new connection with random matrices. As we will see, from two permutations, one can associate a 2d minimal surface in a Euclidean sphere. The main property is that there is a probabilistic rigidity phenomenon: if the two permutations are chosen uniformly at random, then with high probability, the minimal surfaces have a geometry which is close to the hyperbolic plane