31/05/2012, 16:30 — 17:30 — Sala P3.10, Pavilhão de Matemática
Richard Wentworth, University of Maryland
Topology of representation varieties of surface groups
This will be a survey talk on some aspects of the geometry and
topology of moduli spaces of representations of surface groups into
Lie groups. I will discuss recent generalizations of the techniques
of Atiyah and Bott on equivariant Morse theory. These extend
results on stable bundles to Higgs bundles and associated moduli
spaces, which correspond to representation varieties into
noncompact Lie groups.
Partially funded by LARSyS through CAMGSD.
