Topology Seminar: Benedict Williams

The study of central simple algebras over a field is a venerable topic in ring theory. There is a generalization of central simple algebras to schemes in the étale topology (in fact to arbitrary ringed sites) due to Grothendieck. The group of equivalence classes of Azumaya algebras over X is known as the Brauer group of X. By comparing the étale topology on a smooth complex variety X with the classical topology, we are able to use results from classical obstruction theory in order to obstruct the existence of certain Azumaya algebras. After giving an introduction to Azumaya algebras and the Brauer group, we shall present one such result, which furnishes lower bounds on the ranks of Azumaya algebras on spaces of low cohomological dimension.