CMx Lunch

When dealing with vector fields and their smoothness we are naturally led to consider a connection (or covariant derivative) and objects such as the connection Dirichlet energy and the connection Laplacian. I will use problems from physical and geometric modeling to illustrate how a connection can encode interesting application data, leading to optimization problems as simple as minimizing the (connection) Dirichlet energy. The subject has rich connections to many areas of physics and mathematics and I will give an introduction which does not require an advanced differential geometry background.