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First Colloquium October 2

Hi Nullset, we hope you all had a great summer. Normally, we’d hope you had an amazing summer, but we know that you didn’t. Why? Because it was missing something important: Math Colloquia! Fear not, because the time has come for our first Math Colloquia of the school year!

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We will be featuring Professor McConnell from the math department; topic of the talk TBA. Does Professor McConnell’s name sound familiar? He may or may not be the person who McConnell Hall is named after.

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Who? Professor Mark McConnell

What? An Algorithm for Hecke Operators

When? Wednesday, October 2 at 4:30

Where? Fine Room 214

Food? Your choice of BOBA and BYOS

Abstract: A lattice is a discrete subgroup of R^n isomorphic to Z^n.  In the plane, where n=2, the square lattice and the honeycomb are familiar examples.  The space of all lattices can be studied via the well-rounded retract for SL_n, which is a complex glued together from topological cells. When n=2, the well-rounded retract is a tree with three edges meeting each vertex.  Hecke operators act on the cohomology H^i of these spaces, and their eigenvalues are important in number theory.  Previous algorithms to compute Hecke operators have worked for all n, but only in a narrow range of i depending on n.  The talk will present a 2016 algorithm of Robert MacPherson and myself that works for SL_n for all n and all i.  The talk will not assume any detailed background in topology or cohomology.
If you have any further questions, please let us know!


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We hope to see you there!
Your academic chairs, Nathan and Tristan