Colloquium
Speaker: Matthias Franz (Western)
"The cohomology rings of homogeneous spaces"
Time: 15:30
Room: MC 108
Let $G$ be a compact connected Lie group and $K$ a closed connected
subgroup. In 1950 Cartan determined the real cohomology ring of the
homogeneous space $G/K$. The formula can be written as a torsion product
involving the cohomologies of the classifying spaces BG and BK, which
are polynomial algebras. Around 1970 this result was extended to other
coefficients through work of Baum, Gugenheim-May,
Husemoller-Moore-Stasheff, Munkholm and Wolf. However, the isomorphism
was only shown to be additive in this case. I will present a recent
result saying that the isomorphism is in fact multiplicative and
natural in the pair $(G,K)$, provided that 2 is invertible in the
coefficient ring. I will also discuss the main new ideas of the proof,
which involve homotopy Gerstenhaber algebras.