Date & Time: Wednesday, March 23, 2016, 16:00-17:00.
Venue: Ramanujan Hall
Speaker:N.S.N. Sastry,
Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore
Title: Ovoids in projective 3-space
Abstract: Spherical buildings and Chevalley-Serre presentations, apart from many other insights, provide very general geometric and algebraic frameworks, respectively, to study all groups of Lie type uniformly and show them to be a part of a much larger class of geometries and groups. Buildings of ranks 1 and 2, unlike those of higher ranks, are more numerous, they are not necessarily determined by their groups of symmetries and present several very natural combinatorial/ geometric questions. In this talk, I discuss the existence and distribution of ovoids ( these are analogues of spheres) in a finite projective 3-space and outline some recent developments and questions. The broader context in which these questions arise and relation to other combinatorial questions will be indicated. I hope to emphasize on basic ideas.