Room P3.10, Mathematics Building

Richard Hepworth, Univ. of Sheffield, UK
Orbifold Morse Theory

Morse theory is a geometric way to understand the homology of manifolds. Orbifolds are spaces that locally look like the quotient of a manifold by a finite group. I will explain how Morse theory generalizes to orbifolds, giving methods to compute several different notions of "the homology of an orbifold", including the orbifold cohomology of Chen and Ruan.