[Binghamton Geometry/Topology Seminar] (no subject)

[Marco Varisco]

BINGHAMTON GEOMETRY/TOPOLOGY SEMINAR

Date: Thursday December 6, 2007

Time: 2:50 pm

Place: Library North 2205
 (followed by coffee/tea in the Anderson Reading Room)

Speaker: Wojciech Dorabiala (Penn State Altoona)

Title: Smooth parametrized Reidemester torsion --- a manifold approach

Abstract: Dwyer, Weiss, and Williams recently gave a construction of
smooth parametrized Reidemester torsion, which is a secondary
invariant of bundles of smooth manifolds. A very appealing aspect of
their work is that it uses only machinery of homotopy theory, which
makes it intuitively simple. The technical side of the construction of
torsion is however rather involved. The talk will explain how this
construction can be simplified using some results of Waldhausen, and
how this new approach can be used to compare the torsion of
Dwyer-Weiss-Williams to smooth torsion invariants developed by
Bismut-Lott and Igusa-Klein.