TETRAHEDRAL GEOMETRY/TOPOLOGY SEMINAR
ANNOUNCEMENT
DATE: Friday, March 13,
2009
LOCATION: Hempfield
High School, Room 213 (directions at http://www.millersville.edu/~tgts/)
followed by
dinner at a place to be determined.
4:30 TALK: Sam Smith,
Saint Joseph’s University
“Why gauge groups are abelian
after rationalization”
Abstract: The gauge group G(P) of a principal
G-bundle P : E à X is the group
of G-equivariant
bundle equivalences or, alternately, the group \Gamma (Ad(P))
of sections of the associated
adjoint bundle Ad(P) : E x_G G^{ad} à X. We give at least two proofs that the identity
component of this topological group is abelian
after rationalization for X a finite complex. We
then extend this to a compact metric space X using an old result
of Eilenberg-Steenrod which
expresses X as an inverse limit of finite complexes. As an application, we determine the rational
H-homotopy type of the group of unitaries
of a continuous trace C*-algebra. As
time permits, we
discuss related analysis of the group Aut(p) of fibre-homotopy self-equivalences of a Hurewicz
fibration p : E à B.
EVERYONE WELCOME
PLEASE FORWARD THIS ANNOUNCEMENT TO ANYONE
INTERESTED
The Tetrahedral Geometry/Topology Seminar is
sponsored jointly by