Date & Time: Wednesday, Jan 12, 2010 at 5.00 pm
Venue: Ramanujan Hall
Title: The Hodge Conjecture: a possible approach via non-linear PDE
Speaker: Prof. T. R. Ramadas
ICTP, Trieste, Italy
Abstract: I give a gentle introduction to the Hodge conjecture, and describe a particular class of examples (due to Mumford) where it can be investigated. The examples have to do with abelian varieties (four-dimensional complex tori with projective embeddings) which arise from certain number fields. I describe an attack using certain nonlinear PDE inspired by physics ("Spin(7) instantons").