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Deformation Theory Seminar

Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - 2:00pm

Micah Miller

Central Connecticut SU

Location

University of Pennsylvania

DRL 2C4

String topology is the study of the free loop space of a manifold LM. The loop product, defined on the homology of LM, is described intuitively as a combination of the intersection product on M and loop concatenation in the based loop space of M. However, since the intersection product is well-defined only on transversally intersecting chains, this description is incomplete. Brown´s theory of twisting cochains provides a chain model of a bundle in terms of the chains on the base and chains on the fiber. We extend this theory so that it can be applied to provide a model of the free loop space. We give a precise definition of the loop product defined at the chain level.