Geometry Topology Seminar Pre-talk: Fundamental groups of projective varieties by Corey Bregman

Series
Geometry Topology Seminar Pre-talk
Time
Monday, September 30, 2019 - 12:45pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Corey Bregman – Brandeis University – cbregman@brandeis.edu – http://people.brandeis.edu/~cbregman/
Organizer
JungHwan Park

A question going back to Serre asks which groups arise as fundamental groups of smooth, complex projective varieties, or more generally, compact Kaehler manifolds.  The most basic examples of these are surface groups, arising as fundamental groups of 1-dimensional projective varieties.  We will survey known examples and restrictions on such groups and explain the special role surface groups play in their classification. Finally, we connect this circle of ideas to more general questions about surface bundles and mapping class groups.