[Binghamton Geometry/Topology Seminar] Geometry & Topology Seminar

[somnath at math.binghamton.edu]

BINGHAMTON GEOMETRY/TOPOLOGY SEMINAR

*Date:*  Thursday, April 3rd, 2014

*Time:*  2:50-3:50pm
*Place:*  Library North 2205 followed by coffee/tea in the Anderson
Reading Room.

*Speaker: ** *Claudio Meneses (Stony Brook University)
*Title: * The different facets of unitary character varieties

*Abstract:* Character varieties on unitary groups were perhaps the first
understood examples of a vast and rich theory with diverse flavors. In
this talk I will describe a concrete, and in a certain way, minimal
example arising from consideration of the fundamental group of a punctured
sphere, its classical complex-analytic interpretation (in terms of
monodromies of Fuchsian systems), and a relation between its geometric
properties (in the form of a K\"{a}hler structure) and a suitable
interpretation of the WZNW models in conformal field theory.