In the '60s, Palais and Stewart showed that for a smooth principal torus bundle E --> B , any compact simply connected Lie group acting on B may be lifted to E . We would like to give an alternate proof of this theorem. We then formulate the question for any principal G-bundle and discuss the implications. The methods used involve the theory of Yang-Mills on the moduli space of connections.
Geometry-Topology Seminar
Thursday, February 20, 2003 - 4:30pm
Nitu Kitchloo
Johns Hopkins University