Catharina Stroppel : Categorification of fractions via Euler characteristics

Posted by Mihnea Popa , part of the Departmental Colloquium.

At

March 2, 2012, 3 p.m.

In

SEO 636

Abstract

In this talk I will explain the main idea, motivation and a few consequences of the concept of categorification. All this will be illustrated by an example coming from knot theory and low dimensional topology. It turns out that often invariants of knots or links and 3-manifols are given by certain rational numbers which would like to be categorified, or interpreted as an Euler characteristics of some complex. The first steps of a possible answer will be explained. The concept behind this is very general and uses ideas appearing in representation theory and algebraic geometry.