EVENT DETAILS AND ABSTRACT

Title: The Chern-Weil construction
Speaker: Jesse Wolfson
Speaker Info: Northwestern University
Brief Description:
Special Note:
Abstract:

Given a connection on a smooth vector bundle, the Chern-Weil construction allows us to realize the Chern classes of the vector bundle through explicit differential forms. This is a beautiful and simple formalism, and one which easily allows us to deduce many properties of Chern classes at the level of differential forms. I'll go through the construction in some detail, deduce some important properties of Chern classes, and then time and interest permitting, I may sketch how we can do Chern-Weil formalism for more exotic objects such as gerbes.