Sasakian Geometry, Hypersurface Singularities, and Einstein Metrics

Abstract

We review our study of Sasakian geometry as an agent for proving the existence of Einstein metrics on odd dimensional manifolds. Particular emphasis is given to the Sasakian structures occuring on links of isolated hypersurface singularities.Comment: This is an expository article that grew out of notes for the three lectures the second author presented during the XXIV-th Winter School of {\it Geometry and Physics} in Srni, Czech Republic, in January of 2004., 30 pages. Some new examples and references were adde