Date: 5 December 2014, 4:30pm
Location: Hempfield High School, Room 213
 Speaker: Vincent Coll, Lehigh University
   Title: The Homotopy Type of Seaweed Lie Algebras

Abstract. An important (but difficult to compute) invariant of a
Lie algebra is its index.  In this talk we will show that for a certain
class of Lie algebras (seaweeds), the index can be computed by counting
the connected components of a remarkable planar graph (called a meander)
associated with the seaweed algebra.  The counting will require an
understanding of the underlying homotopy type of the seaweed.  We will
pay particular attention to Frobenius algebras – those whose index is 0.