Instructor: Lisa Jeffrey  (6 weeks until reading week), Mikiya Masuda (6 weeks after reading week)

* Please note that this course has a tentative date to resume April 29th. Updates will be posted here*

This course will cover

(1) background for group actions on topological spaces

(2) Hamiltonian group actions   

(3) Actions of discrete groups on topological spaces
(for example actions of $Z_2$)

(4) Actions of compact abelian groups (in other words
copies of the circle group $U(1)^n$) on smooth manifolds

(5) Actions of compact nonabelian grroups (for example $U(n)$ and
$SU(n)$

(6) Fixed point set of a group action

(7) Action of a group on the tangent space at a fixed point

(a) compact abelian groups

(b) compact nonabelian groups

(8) Equivariant characteristic classes

(9) Equivariant cohomology

(10) Recent results

Texts:

(1) V. Guillemin, Moment Maps and Combinatorial Invariants of Hamiltonian
(T^n) - spaces. Birkhauser Progress in Mathematics (1994)

(2) Toric Topology (V. Buchstaber and T. Panov)

(3) Toric Topology (proceedings, Osaka 2006)

Grading: 1 final presentation or written report , 100%