Wed, March 6, 2019
4:10 pm - 5:10 pm
Cockins Hall 228
Title: Some applications of algebra to PDE
Speaker: Ben McMillan (Stony Brook University)
Abstract: After defining exterior differential systems and describing how they are equivalent to PDE, I will indicate how they can be used to answer questions about PDE using homological algebraic tools. For example, the existence of solutions to overdetermined PDE can be reduced to a cohomological dimension count. For another example, there is a spectral sequence that computes the space of conservation laws of a PDE. I will attempt to describe how these provide obstructions to solutions "up to homotopy".