2009 Topology Seminar - 04
- Date: 02/11/2009
University of British Columbia
Orientation reversal of manifolds
An orientable manifold is called amphicheiral if it admits an
orientation-reversing self-map and chiral if it does not. Many familiar
manifolds like spheres or orientable surfaces are amphicheiral but
chiral manifolds have also been known for many decades, e.g. the
complex projective spaces CP^{2n} and some lens spaces in dimensions
congruent 3 mod 4. Interestingly, however, this phenomenon had not been
studied systematically. In my talk, I will report on results concerning
both chirality and amphicheirality of manifolds. The focus lies on the
existence of simply-connected chiral manifolds in all possible
dimensions.
3:00pm-4:00pm, WMAX 110