Representation theory of symplectic singularities

Ben Webster (University of Virginia / Paris 7)

Monday 2nd June, 2014 16:00-17:00 Maths 204

Abstract

 

Since they were introduced about 2 decades ago, symplectic singularities have shown themselves to be a remarkable branch of algebraic geometry.  They are much nicer in many ways than arbitrary singularities, but still have a lot of interesting nooks and crannies.

 

I'll talk about these varieties from a representation theorist's perspective.  This might sound like a strange direction, but remember, any interesting symplectic structure is likely to be the classical limit of an equally interesting non-commutative structure, whose representation theory we can study. While this field is still in its infancy, it includes a lot of well-known examples like universal enveloping algebras and Cherednik algebras, and has led a lot of interesting places, including to categorified knot invariants and a conjectured duality between pairs of symplectic singularities.  I'll give a taste of these results and try to indicate some interesting future directions.

 

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