NORTHEASTERN
UNIVERSITY
MATHEMATICS
DEPARTMENT
REPRESENTATION
THEORY AND RELATED TOPICS SEMINAR
Paul Bressler
(University of Arizona)
The First Pontryagin Class
ABSTRACT: Classification
of locally defined structures on manifolds leads to cohomology classes which
are obstructions to global existence of such structures. I will describe
a classification problem which leads to the first Pontryagin class (associated
to a Lie algebra with a symmetric pairing). The locally defined structures
in this case are certain Courant algebroids. Time permitting, I will try
to place this problem in a broader phys/math context.
Date: June 2, 2003
Time:
11:00 - 12:00
544
Lake Hall
For
further information visit http://www.northeastern.edu/martsinkovsky/p/rtrt.html
or contact Alex Martsinkovsky <alexmart@neu.edu>