Speaker: Prof. Julian Chaidez (University of Southern California)

Title: On Zoll Contact 5-Spheres And Related Questions

Time: 16:00-17:00  June 1, 2026 (Monday)

Place: MCM410

Abstract: A Riemannian metric is called Zoll if all of its geodesics are closed and of the same period. More generally, a contact form is called Zoll if all of the Reeb orbits are closed and of the same period. I will explain recent joint work with Shira Tanny showing that every Zoll contact form on the standard contact 5-sphere is equivalent to the standard one up to scaling by a constant. The analogous question for arbitrary contact 5-spheres is an intriguing open question that is closely related to the existence problem for exotic symplectic projective planes.