EVENT DETAILS AND ABSTRACT

Title: Massey products in Galois cohomology
Speaker: Federico Scavia
Speaker Info: UCLA
Brief Description:
Special Note:
Abstract:

The Borromean rings are three interlinked circles such that no two circles are linked: if we cut or remove one of the circles, the other two fall apart. Massey products are an algebraic manifestation of this phenomenon. Born as part of algebraic topology, they have now made a surprising appearance in number theory. The Massey Vanishing Conjecture of Minac and Tan predicts that all Massey products in the Galois cohomology of a field vanish as soon as they are defined. This conjecture is motivated by the Profinite Inverse Galois Problem: which profinite groups are absolute Galois groups? I will describe recent progress on the Massey Vanishing Conjecture, joint with Alexander Merkurjev.