Moduli spaces of curves and representations of categories of finite sets

Series
Representation Theory, Moduli, and Physics Seminar
Time
Tuesday, March 3, 2026 - 1:00pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Philip Tosteson – UNC Chapel Hill – ptoste@unc.eduhttps://ptoste.github.io
Organizer
Harold Blum

A representation of the category of finite sets is a slightly unusual algebraic structure, consisting of a vector space for each finite set and a linear transformation between vector spaces for each map of sets.  (It is a functor from finite sets to vector spaces).  I will talk about how these representations arise in the homology of moduli spaces of curves, and how they can be used to study the asymptotic behavior of sequences of homology groups.