A primer on the (2+1) Einstein universe

The Einstein universe is the conformal compactification of Minkowski space. It also arises as the ideal boundary of anti-de Sitter space. The purpose of this article is to develop the synthetic geometry of the Einstein universe in terms of its homogeneous submanifolds and causal structure, with particular emphasis on dimension $2 + 1$, in which there is a rich interplay with symplectic geometry.