Topology Seminar

Colorado State University Topology Seminar

We meet in Weber 201 at 4pm on Tuesdays

Co-organized by Ben Knudsen and David Mehrle
August 25 Organizational Meeting
September 1 David Mehrle An introduction to equivariant homotopy theory
Equivariant homotopy theory has played a major role in many of the recent triumphs of algebraic topology, such as the resolution of the Kervaire invariant problem and the disproof of the telescope conjecture. The power -- and the difficulty -- of equivariant homotopy theory lies in its ability to capture more information about spaces than homotopy group or cohomology rings alone. This, however, requires that we replace the familiar homotopy groups by new algebraic objects called Mackey functors. I'll give a brief introduction to equivariant homotopy theory and the algebra of Mackey functors, and share some of my work on equivariant algebra.
September 8 David Mehrle Free incomplete Tambara functors are almost never flat
The fact that free algebras like $\mathbb{Z}[x]$ are flat as $\mathbb{Z}$-modules is incredibly useful in homological algebra. Building on last week's talk, we investigate this property in the context of Mackey functors, where the free algebras are called free incomplete Tambara functors. We find that this property holds only very rarely in the equivariant context, and that it is controlled entirely by combinatorial considerations. This is joint work with Mike Hill and J.D. Quigley.
September 15 Ben Knudsen An invitation to graph braid groups
For the past 20 years, configuration spaces of graphs have been studied intensively in algebraic topology, geometric group theory, topological robotics, and algebraic geometry. Nevertheless, there are many questions unanswered and much work to be done. This talk will survey the fundamental results and open questions in this area, assuming no prior familiarity. Depending on time, we may touch on some past, present, and future joint work with An, Drummond-Cole, and Ramos.
September 22 Lucas Williams (Purdue) Invariants for Families of Periodic Points
In this talk we investigate invariants that count periodic points of a map. Given a self map $f$ of a compact manifold we could detect $n$-periodic points of $f$ by computing the Reidemeister trace of $f^n$ or by computing the equivariant Fuller trace. In 2020 Malkiewich and Ponto showed that the collection of Reidemeister traces of $f^k$ for varying $k\mid n$ and the equivariant Fuller trace are equivalent as periodic point invariants, and they conjecture that for families of endomorphisms the Fuller trace will be a strictly richer invariant for $n$-periodic points. In this talk we will explain our new result which confirms Malkiewich and Ponto's conjecture. We do so by proving a new Pontryagin-Thom isomorphism between equivariant parameterized cobordism and the spectrum of sections of a particular parametrized spectrum and using this result to carry out geometric computations. Time permitting, we will discuss how this homeomorphism of a manifold gives rise to an element of the kernel of the ghost map on $\pi_1(-)$ of topological restriction homology.
September 29 Jesse Keyes (Kentucky)

October 6 No Seminar
October 13 Jacob Cleveland
October 20 No Seminar
October 27 Mark Shoemaker
November 3 Rachel Pries
November 10
November 17
November 24 No Seminar: Thanksgiving
December 1
December 8
January 27 Organizational Meeting
February 3 Markus Pflaum (CU Boulder) Homotopical study of $C^*$-algebraic quantum spin systems
February 12 No Seminar
February 17 Rachel Pries Calculating the classifying element for Fermat curves
February 24 Rob McConkey (CSU Pueblo)      Traffic on knots: the theta invariant
March 3 Nick Wawrykow (Chicago) The 15 puzzle and homological stability in the space direction
March 10 Tatum Rask The Möbius homology Laplacian for persistence
March 17 No Seminar: Spring Break
March 24 Mark Shoemaker An introduction to vector bundles and Chern classes
March 31 Ignacio Rojas About equivariant cohomology: introduction, ideas, and examples
April 7 Mark Shoemaker A topological Chern character for matrix factorizations
April 14 Joe Geisz Knot Spaces
April 21 Louis Hainaut (Chicago) A classifying space for the mapping class group of handlebodies
April 28 Vivian de León Ramos Topological complexity of configuration spaces of planar graphs
May 5 Ross Flaxman Polyhedral geometry and tropicalization
September 2 Organizational Meeting
September 9 Ben Knudsen Exotic Spheres
September 16 Jacob Cleveland Intersection homology
September 23 No Seminar
September 30 Amit Patel Cobordism and transversality
October 7 Agn⩮s Beaudry (CU Boulder)
October 14 Amit Patel Cobordism and the Thom space
October 21 Ekansh Jauhari (University of Florida)      On probabilistic invariants of non-negatively curved manifolds
October 28 Rachel Pries Fundamental groups, Grothendieck's perspective, and some open problems
November 4 No Seminar
November 11 Tatum Rask Stiefel-Whitney classes for vector bundles
November 20 Joe Geisz A model of flocking using sheaves
November 25 No Seminar: Thanksgiving
December 2 Vivian de León Ramos Configuration spaces
December 9 No Seminar