Copenhagen meeting on differential characters
2-6 August, 2010
Differential characters were originally introduced by Cheeger and Simons: they refine integral cohomology classes of higher degree in the same way that complex line bundles with connection refine cohomology classes of degree 2. They have many applications in mathematics and theoretical physics: in algebraic geometry, they are important under the name Deligne cohomology classes, they allow a refinement of the Chern-Weil homomorphism, and they increasingly arise in the formulation of classical field theories with higher gauge fields (and in supergravity). This meeting will bring together a number of experts in different parts of mathematics and physics who use differential characters in their work.
The following will attend:
- Paul Bressler (MPIM)
- Ulrich Bunke (Regensburg)
- Johan Dupont (Aarhus)
- Helene Esnault (Essen)
- Ludwig Faddeev (St Petersburg)
- Ezra Getzler (Northwestern)
- Sebastian Goette (Freiburg)
- Chris Hull (Imperial)
- Alex Kahle (Goettingen)
- Franz Kamber (UIUC)
- Ulf Lindstrom (Uppsala)
- Jouko Mickelsson (Helsinki)
- Ryszard Nest (Copenhagen)
- Urs Schreiber (Utrecht)
- Sandro Valentino (Goettingen)
- Maxim Zabzine (Uppsala)
