dr. Torres' seminar at SISSA

[Emanuele Tuillier Illingworth]

SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENT

Speaker: Rafael Torres (SISSA)

Title: Inequivalent differentiable structures in dimension four: 
constructions and geometric properties.

Abstract: Dimension four hosts phenomena like no other dimension, and 
several areas of research come together in its study. For instance, the 
existence of infinitely many exotic smooth structures on \R^n is only 
observed if n = 4. Understanding smooth 4-manifolds is an intriguing 
problem, where even a conjectural diffeomorphism classification scheme 
remains elusive. The talk will survey uncanny 4-dimensional phenomena in 
an example-driven fashion, employing a homogeneous space, a surface 
bundle over a surface, and elliptic complex surfaces. Basic knowledge in 
differential topology and Riemannian geometry, and the talk will be 
accessible to most graduate students.

Venue: Tuesday 11 March at 4.30 pm in lecture room 136