Top Global Course Special Lectures by Prof. Gennadi Kasparov

Top Global Course Special Lectures by Prof. Gennadi Kasparov (Vanderbilt University) will take place as follows:

Date & Time
Thursday, June 20, 13:00-14:00
Venue
127 Conference Room, Faculty of Science Bldg. #3, Kyoto University
Title
K-theory of group $C^*$-algebras and applications
Abstract
A rapid development of K-theory of group $C^*$-algebras started about 40 years ago. To a large extent this was related with applications to topology of smooth manifolds (the Novikov conjecture on higher signatures) and to representation theory of semisimple Lie groups (and discrete discrete series in particular). But the topic of K-theory for group $C^*$-algebras is very attractive also by its deep relations with index theory of elliptic operators. There are several unsolved, very challenging conjectures in this theory, such as the Baum-Connes conjecture and the Kadison-Kaplansky conjecture. I will try to give a survey of the current status of this theory, without going into deep technical details. This talk will be accessible to graduate students. (Some knowledge of Hilbert space theory will be required).
Language
English