Wednesday, November 30th, 2011
2:00pm - 3:00pm, in Science 2-064

Emily Peters

MIT

Non-commutative Galois theory and the classification of small-index subfactors

Abstract: Subfactors of von Neumann algebras can be thought of as a non-commutative generalization of field extensions. Subfactors have a finite-er invariant, called a planar algebra, which is similar to the automorphism group of a field extension in Galois theory. In this talk, I will explain the ingredients of this analogy in more detail. I will also describe recent work (joint with Morrison, Snyder and others) extending the classification of subfactors up to index 5.