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Geometry-Topology Seminar

Thursday, December 4, 2008 - 4:30pm

Robert Ghrist

Penn

Location

University of Pennsylvania

DRL 4C8

I will review integration with respect to Euler characteristic in the constructible category (a simple combinatorial integration theory). Then, I will present an extension to the class of real-valued integrands, definable with respect to an o-minimal structure. This extension, though ostensibly more analytic, has a deeper connection to Morse theory. No previous exposure to o-minimal topology/geometry or Euler integration assumed. The talk will end with some conjectural thoughts about Morse theory for distributions.