Algebraic Geometry Learning Seminar

UT Austin, Fall 2016

9-11, Wednesdays
RLM 8.136

This is a learning seminar organized by Tom Oldfield (toldfield@math.utexas.edu). You can find some electronic notes, taken during the seminar by Arun Debray.

We'll meet once a week, and talks should aim to be an hour long. The room will be available for a second hour if speakers wish to use the additional time, to provide more detailed proofs, examples, or material that time would otherwise not allow for. Speakers sharing chapters should organise between themselves how to split the material up.

This aim of this seminar is to learn the basics of the theory of algebraic groups from Milne's online notes. Algebraic groups come up a lot in algebraic geometry, and geometry more generally. As well as being of inherent interest (examples include elliptic curves and Abelian varieties), the study of principal G bundles (on a Riemann surface say) and their associated moduli spaces also has many interesting applications. This is also an opportunity for those less well-versed into algebraic geometry to get an introduction with a lot of interesting and understandable examples.

The technical details of algebraic geometry are notoriously difficult, so those who want to get a firm understanding of the details should aim to do at least some of the exercises from the relevant material outside of the seminar each week. Those who just want to get an overall picture of the field and a flavour for the kinds of problems it tackles are of course more than welcome to simply attend the talks.

The schedule of talks is as follows: