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Back to Departmental Colloquium: Spring 2000

Departmental Colloquium


Date: Monday, Apr 10, 2000

Time: 4:15PM

Location: JWB 335


Angelo Vistoli

Bologna, Italy)

Title

Decomposing equivariant K-theory rings

Abstract

Vector bundles are among the basic objects of study in all of geometry. Out of vector bundles on an algebraic variety or a topological space X one forms a ring K_0(X), the K -theory ring of X, introduced by Grothendieck. If furthermore there is a group G operating on X one forms the equivariant K -theory ring K_0(X,G), using equivariant vector bundles on X. For example if X is a point then K_0(X,G) is the representation ring of G, already a very interesting object. The ring K_0(X,G) has some of the same formal properties of the nonequivariant ring K_0(X), but its theory is richer, because of the interaction of the algebra coming from G with the geometry coming from X. In particular K_0(X,G) tends to decompose in interesting ways, reflecting the properties of the fixed point subsets. I will start by motivating the introduction of the K -theory rings, and end by illustrating some decomposition results in their simplest context.

Algebraic K-theory Representation Theory Algebraic Geometry

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