[Binghamton Geometry/Topology Seminar] Geometry/Topology Seminar

[Christoforos Neofytidis]

BINGHAMTON GEOMETRY/TOPOLOGY SEMINAR

   Date: Thursday, October 13th, 2016

   Time: 2.50 pm

   Place: Whitney Hall, Room 100E

   Speaker: Steve Ferry (SUNY at Binghamton and Rutgers University)

   Title: Distance functions, data, and comparison geometry

Abstract: We show that there are homotopy equivalences $h:N\to M$ between
closed manifolds which are induced by cell-like maps $p:N\to X$ and
$q:M\to X$ but which are not homotopic to homeomorphisms.  The phenomenon
is based on construction of cell-like maps that kill certain
$\bL$-classes. The image space in these constructions is necessarily
infinite-dimensional. In dimension $>6$ we classify all such homotopy
equivalences. As an application, we show that such homotopy equivalences
are realized by deformations of Riemannian manifolds in Gromov-Hausdorff
space preserving a contractibility function, an observation that has
consequences in topological data analysis.

NOTE:  The seminar has a webpage where the semester's program is listed:

http://www2.math.binghamton.edu/p/seminars/topsem