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Rademacher Lectures

Tuesday, November 1, 2022 - 3:45pm

Akshay Venkatesh

Institute for Advanced Study

Location

University of Pennsylvania

A8 DRL

Tea will be served at 3:15pm in 4E17 DRL.

The Weil representation  leads one to consider certain Lie groups that arise as universal covers of matrix groups.  I will give some examples of how these arise in topology, describing first a theorem of W. Meyer about the signature of surface bundles, and then a more recent theorem about 3-manifolds that involves a more subtle characteristic class. This is joint work with Amina Abdurrahman.