Graduate Student / Postdoc Seminar

Rationality: Reasonable or Not

Speaker: Alena Pirutka

Location: Warren Weaver Hall 1302

Date: Friday, November 20, 2015, 1 p.m.

Synopsis:

An algebraic variety is rational if it has an open subset isomorphic to an open of an affine space. However, these varieties are still quite difficult to understand. For instance, it could be very tricky to determine whether a given variety is rational or not. In this talk we will discuss various properties related to the rationality, provide examples where these properties hold and give some ideas on methods used for these questions.