This is an informal mostly internal seminar, giving members of the geometry group the chance to tell each other about their current work and/or interests. However, anyone is welcome to come and take part. Talks will usually last about one hour, unless otherwise indicated. If you would like to receive regular email announcements of talks, just drop me a note. Other geometry related colloquia etc. in Odense are also included in the list below. Other talks at the department may usually be found on MatNyt, also of relevance are the talks in high energy physics.
Kasper Andersen Broadly speaking, the aim of algebraic topology is to study topological spaces by assigning algebraic invariants to them. One of the simplest is the integral cohomology ring H^*(X), which is a graded commutative ring. In 1960, Steenrod asked which polynomial rings can occur as H^*(X)? The talk will be a survey on this problem and its recent solution (joint work with J. Grodal, Copenhagen). The survey will be elementary and all basic concepts will be introduced during the talk.
Andrew Dancer A Ricci soliton is a generalisation of an Einstein metric. It generates a solution to the Ricci flow that evolves by the natural symmetries of the system, that is, by diffeomorphisms and homothetic rescalings. We produce new examples of Ricci solitons, including many of non-Kahler type, by looking for examples with large symmetry group, so that the equations reduce to a nonlinear dynamical system.