Reinhold-Baer-Kolloquium

Saturday, 21th of January, 2017 at TU Berlin

Description

This conference series with a long tradition features talks in Group Theory, Geometry and Topology. It takes place twice a year, at varying locations.

There is no registration fee. Nonetheless, please register by email to Antje Schulz. Registration is mandatory for participation in the conference dinner.

Venue

Institut für Mathematik, TU Berlin, Lecture Hall: MA 004.

Program

Gunter Malle (TU Kaiserslautern): Products and Commutators of Classes

10:00 - 11:00
Abstract: We classify pairs of conjugacy classes in almost simple algebraic groups whose product consists of finitely many classes. This leads to several interesting families of examples which are related to a generalization of the Baer-Suzuki theorem for finite groups. We also answer a question of Pavel Shumyatsky on commutators of pairs of conjugacy classes in simple algebraic groups. It turns out that the resulting examples are exactly those for which the product also consists of only finitely many classes. The original motivation is a conjecture of Arad and Herzog on finite simple groups. This is joint work with R. Guralnick and P. Tiep.

Silvia Sabatini (U Köln): 12, 24 and Beyond

11:30 - 12:30
Abstract: Mathematics finds itself divided and subdivided into hyper-specialized areas of study, each of them with its own internal beauty. However, what I find most fascinating is when one can build a bridge between two of these seemingly isolated theories. For instance, symplectic geometry and combinatorics have a very strong connection, due to the existence of Hamiltonian torus actions. Such actions come with a map, called moment map, which "transforms" a compact symplectic manifold into a convex polytope. Hence many combinatorial properties of (some special types of) polytopes can be studied using symplectic techniques. In this talk I will focus on reflexive polytopes, and explain the so called "12" and "24" phenomenon in dimension 2 and 3 and its generalizations using symplectic geometry.

Koen Thas (U Gent): Projective Representation of Translation Generalized Quadrangles

14:30 - 15:30
Abstract: The famous André-Bruck-Bose construction allows one to represent any translation plane in a projective space (over a division ring), through the observation that its kernel is a division ring. It is a long-standing conjecture that the same result is true for translation generalized quadrangles, the 4-gonal analogues of projective planes in the theory of buildings. Translation generalized quadrangles that satisfy the conjecture are usually called linear. In this talk, we survey some of the known results on this conjecture, and we include results of the speaker which were written up only recently. One of these results says that any translation generalized quadrangle can be ideally embedded in a translation quadrangle which itself is linear, so which can be represented in a projective space over a division ring. It follows that there is a well-defined notion of “characteristic” for these objects. One can then show that each translation quadrangle in positive characteristic indeed is linear.

Kristin Shaw (TU Berlin): Chern-Schwarz-MacPherson Classes of Matroids

16:00 - 17:00
Abstract: Chern-Schwarz-Macpherson (CSM) classes are one way to extend the notion of Chern classes to singular and non-complete varieties. Matroids are an abstraction of the notion of independence in mathematics. In this talk, I will provide a combinatorial analogue of these classes for matroids, motivated by the situation for hyperplane arrangements. In this setting, CSM classes are polyhedral fans which are Minkowski weights. One goal in doing this is to express matroid invariants such as, the characteristic polynomial, h-vector, and conjecturally Speyer's g-polynomial, as invariants from algebraic geometry. But also these combinatorial CSM classes can be used to study the complexity of more general objects such as subdivisions of matroid polytopes and tropical varieties. This is based on joint work with Lucia Lopez de Medrano and Felipe Rincon and also work in progress with Alex Fink and David Speyer.

Dinner

At 18:00 we will have a joint dinner (self-paid) at a restaurant near the conference venue. Pre-registration is mandatory.

Organizers: Michael Joswig and Linus Kramer.