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Graduate Student Geometry-Topology Seminar

Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - 11:00am

Lee Kennard

Penn

Location

University of Pennsylvania

DRL 4C4

Last week, I gave an overview of what is known about fundamental groups of compact, positively curved manifolds. This included theorems of Wilking and Frank-Rong-Wang that conclude the fundamental groups are cyclic if there is a sufficiently large torus acting by isometries. I also discussed the cases where their statements are sharp and examples which suggest what the sharpest statements might be. This week, I plan to sketch the proof of Wilking's result, which should indicate the relevance of the topics mentioned in the title.