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University of Sydney
School of Mathematics and Statistics
Anthony Henderson
Massachusetts Institute f Technology
Applications of character sheaves.
Friday 14th July, 12-1pm, Carslaw 175.
One of the landmark problems of twentieth-century
mathematics was to calculate the character table of a reductive
group over a finite field. Green's combinatorial solution in 1955
of the case of the general linear groups proved very difficult
to generalize. The breakthrough was made by Lusztig (partly in
collaboration with Deligne) in the 70s and 80s, using geometrical
methods such as intersection cohomology. I'll give a brief introduction
to Lusztig's theory of character sheaves, and also discuss its
application to a related problem, where a combinatorial
approach is unknown even for the general linear groups.
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