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Deformation Theory Seminar

Wednesday, October 31, 2007 - 2:00pm

David Hurtibuise

Penn State - Altoona

Location

University of Pennsylvania

DRL 4N30

I will discuss joint work with Augustin Banyaga where we give a new proof of the Morse Homology Theorem by constructing a chain complex associated to a Morse-Bott-Smale function that reduces to the Morse-Smale-Witten chain complex when the function is Morse-Smale and to the chain complex of smooth singular $N$-cube chains when the function is constant. We show that the homology of the chain complex is independent of the Morse-Bott-Smale function by using compactified moduli spaces of time dependent gradient flow lines to prove a Floer-type continuation theorem.