[Binghamton Geometry/Topology Seminar] February 12

[Marco Varisco]

BINGHAMTON GEOMETRY/TOPOLOGY SEMINAR
  http://www.math.binghamton.edu/dept/topsem/

Date:  Thursday, February 12, 2009

Time:  2:50 pm

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

Speaker:  Emanuele Delucchi

Title:  Discrete Morse theory for arrangements of hyperplanes

Abstract:  The topological space obtained by removing a set of
hyperplanes from a finite dimensional complex vector space has many
interesting features. For instance, every such space is minimal, in
the sense that it has the homotopy type of a CW complex with as many
cells in every dimension as there are generators of the corresponding
homology group. The central question about complements of hyperplane
arrangements is to study to what extent the topology of the complement
is determined by the combinatorics of the pattern of intersections of
the hyperplanes.
The goal of the talk is to introduce some basics of the theory of
hyperplane arrangements and to show that the above-mentioned
minimality property can be deduced from purely combinatorial
considerations (at least in the case where the hyperplanes are defined
by real linear forms).