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Deformation Theory Seminar

Wednesday, July 30, 2008 - 2:00pm

Jim Stasheff

U Penn

Location

University of Pennsylvania

DRL 4N30

`Twist' is one of the most overworked words in our current lexicon. This will be a survey of distinct but related meanings all of which portend to be related to current `mathematical physics': twisting cochains, twisted de Rham cohomology, twisted K-theory, twisted Spin, String, etc bundles,`twisted bundles'meaning gerbe modules. Applications to String-like extensions of Lie algebras such as the Fivebrane algebra will be a focus.