Back to Departmental Colloquium: Spring 2016
Departmental Colloquium
Date: Thursday, Mar 31, 2016
Time: 4:00PM
Location: LCB 219
Mike Wolf
Rice University
Title |
Degenerating Harmonic Maps and Frontiers of Spaces of Representations |
Abstract |
Some spaces of surface group representations into Lie groups may be related to geometric structures on a surface and to harmonic maps of surfaces into symmetric spaces. The latter provide for ways of imagining limits of degenerating representations as singular geometric objects such as R-trees and buildings. We focus on examples involving hyperbolic surfaces, affine spheres, convex real projective structures and ‘opers’, with a plan to explain all of the words. Joint work with David Dumas, John Loftin; we will also discuss work of Jorge Acosta. |
Representation Theory