Tuesday, Oct 1, 2-3 PM Nelson Rm (1146 Faculty Administration Building)

Speaker:  Claude Schochet, Technion, formerly WSU
Title:   The Secret life of real K-theory

Abstract: Aren’t real vector bundles just like complex vector bundles? Well, yes, and KO^*(X) is pretty similar formally to KU^*(X) (except 2 is not equal to 8) .   Generalize K-theory to real and to complex C^*- algebras, though, and you see evidence of the secret life. Teaser: every commutative complex C^*-algebra is isomorphic to C_o(X,C)$ for some locally compact X. It’s false for real C^*-algebras and the example appears above: it is thre complex numbers C, thought of as a real commutative C^*-algebra of dimension 2.  It is not isomorphic to R^2 even as a ring!