Abstract:Alongside with conic bundles, del Pezzo surfaces are possible outcomes of the Minimal Model Program ran on a geometrically rational surface. Thus, many questions about birational geometry and birational automorphisms of geometrically rational surfaces reduce to similar questions for del Pezzo surfaces. I will survey some known results concerning birational models and birational automo...
Abstract:we (try to) give a friendly guide for shearing between hyperbolic surfaces in as ``efficient" a manner as possible. On the way, we'll see Teichmueller spaces, Thurston's earthquake theorem, and a novel metric on Teichmueller space called the earthquake metric which has surprising connections to both the Thurston metric and the Weil-Petersson metric. This is work in collaboration with K...