Topology Seminar: Maxime Bergeron

I will discuss the topology of the space Hom(N,G) of homomorphisms from a finitely generated group N into a reductive complex linear algebraic group G (e.g. a special linear group). When K is a maximal compact subgroup of G (e.g. the subgroup of special unitary matrices), Hom(N,K) is a subspace of Hom(N,G). Although in general these topological spaces are quite different, I will show that when N is nilpotent there is a strong deformation retraction of Hom(N,G) onto Hom(N,K).