Orador Convidado: Pablo Pedregal, Universidad Castilla la Mancha, Spain

Mini-Curso: Some general ideas and the high-dimensional case

Abstract: We will explain the main features defining this kind of problems, and the relationship between a general functional and its geometric or invariant representation. After going through several simple, illustrative examples and cases, we will focus a bit on the particular case of surfaces in space with special emphasis on the quadratic case leading to the problem of minimal surfaces. The discussion will be informative without formal proofs or calculations.