LSU Mathematics Student Colloquium
The goal of the LSU Mathematics Student Colloquium is to give both undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to hear and interact with speakers from across the country, providing information and perspective possibly relevant to their graduate and postgraduate careers.
Each invited speaker will spend several days at LSU, giving multiple talks and making himself or herself available to undergraduates.
Talks are not confined to the math department but open to everyone. Those majoring in related fields are encouraged to come.
We are a chartered LSU student organization (constitution and bylaws). We are munificently funded by the Student Government Programming, Support, and Initiatives Fund (PSIF), and the LSU Mathematics Department. We are grateful for the generous past funding made by grants from the National Science Foundation (a VIGRE grant) and the Board of Regents.
Wednesday, October 22: Paul Kirk
Paul is a professor at Indiana University. He received his PhD in 1988 from Brandeis University, and was a post-doc at the California Institute of Technology before moving to Indiana. He coauthored the Graduate Series in Mathematics textbook "Lecture Notes in Algebraic Topology" with James Davis. Paul's main research interest is geometric topology, particularly low (3 and 4) dimensional topology. Most of his research ultimately concerns the study of fundamental groups of manifolds.
Student Colloquium (Lockett 241; Wednesday, October 22, 11:30-12:30 AM)
Title: On the SU(2) character variety of a closed oriented genus 2 surface
Abstract: A celebrated theorem of Narasimhan-Ramanan asserts that the singular variety is homeomorphic to . The proof passes through the (mysterious) Narasimhan-Seshadri correspondence. I'll outline an elementary differential topology proof that is a manifold, homeomorphic to CP^3, and discuss how 3-manifolds with genus 2 boundary determine embedded lagrangians in . If time permits, I'll end the talk with a discussion of context, particularly with a program known as the Atiyah-Floer conjecture.
Gallery
See for photos of our previous student colloquiums.