Topology Seminar: David Carchedi

Differentiable stacks are generalizations of smooth manifolds suitable for modelling poor quotients, such as quotients by non-free Lie group actions. In this talk, we will define differentiable stacks and explain how they can also be used to model the leaf space of a foliation. In the following week, we will explain some recent results of ours about a nice subclass of differentiable stacks, called etale differentiable stacks, and explain some applications to foliation theory.