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Colloquium-Landau Lectures: Ravi Vakil (Stanford) "Cutting and pasting in algebraic geometry, and the motivic zeta function" | Einstein Institute of Mathematics

Colloquium-Landau Lectures: Ravi Vakil (Stanford) "Cutting and pasting in algebraic geometry, and the motivic zeta function"

Date: 
Thu, 17/03/201615:30-16:30
Location: 
Manchester Building (Hall 2), Hebrew University Jerusalem
Given some class of "geometric spaces", we can make a ring as follows.
1. (additive structure) When U is an open subset of such a space X, [X] = [U] + [(X \ U)]
2. (multiplicative structure)} [X x Y] = [X] [Y].
In the algebraic setting, this ring (the "Grothendieck ring of varieties") contains surprising structure, connecting geometry to arithmetic and topology.
I will give an introduction to the Grothendieck ring of varieties, giving a survey of a small portion of interesting results in the field due to various people (Kapranov, Cheah, Larsen-Lunts, Liu-Sebag, Bittner, Borisov, Litt, ...). Time permitting, I will discuss joint work with Melanie Matchett Wood. (This lecture is intended for a broad audience.)