Topologie

Abstract

The Oberwolfach conference “Topologie” is one of only a few opportunities for researchers from many different areas in algebraic and geometric topology to meet and exchange ideas. The program covered new developments in fields such as automorphisms of manifolds, applications of algebraic topology to differential geometry, quantum field theories, combinatorial methods in low-dimensional topology, abstract and applied homotopy theory and applications of L2-cohomology. We heard about new results describing the cohomology of the automorphism spaces of some smooth manifolds, progress on spaces of positive scalar curvature metrics, a variant of the Segal conjecture without completion, advances in classifying topological quantum field theories, and a new undecidability result in combinatorial group theory, to mention some examples. As a special attraction, the conference featured a series of three talks by Dani Wise on the combinatorics of CAT(0)-cube complexes and applications to 3-manifold topology.