Contact homology and virtual fundamental cycles (2/5)

The goal of this course is to give a construction of contact homology in the sense of Eliashberg–Givental–Hofer. I will begin with an introduction to contact geometry, pseudo-holomorphic curves as introduced by Gromov, and some target applications of contact homology. The main focus will then be on extracting enough enumerative information (i.e. « virtual fundamental cycles ») out of the relevant moduli spaces of pseudo-holomorphic curves. I will present a general framework for doing this, and then discuss the specific application to contact homology.