4:00 pm Monday, April 27, 2015
Colloquium: Matrix Factorizations, Old and New by
David Eisenbud (MSRI and UC Berkeley) in RLM 5.104
You cannot factor the determinant D of a 2x2 matrix as a nontrivial product of polynomials, but, as we teach our linear algebra students, you can factor D times a 2x2 identity matrix as the product of the matrix and its cofactor matrix. It turns out that any power series of order has a ``matrix factorization'' in this sense, and such matrix factorizations have since proven useful in many contexts in commutative algebra, algebraic geometry, and even knot theory and string theory. I’ll explain some of the history and background of this theory, and sketch a recent extension to complete intersections (joint work with Irena Peeva). Submitted by
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