Geometry & Topology

Event Information Configuration spaces of hard objects
16:10 on Monday November 18, 2019
17:00 on Monday November 18, 2019
BA6183, Bahen Center, 40 St. George St.
Hannah Alpert

UBC

Take n objects and put them in a container.? What is the configuration space of all the ways they can fit in the container without intersecting?? How does the topology of that configuration space change depending on the size of the objects and the size of the container?? In particular, given a set of objects, how big does the container have to be for the configuration space to have homology in degree j?? We compare the setting of squares in a rectangle to that of segments in a disk.