Georg Frenck, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Title: The space of positive Ricci curvature metrics

Abstract: In recent years a lot of effort has gone into
studying spaces of Riemannian metrics with lower curvature bounds. In
contrast to the case of positive scalar curvature, very little is
known for positive Ricci curvature, especially when one is interested
in higher homotopy or (co-)homology groups. In this talk I will
demonstrate how to detect nontrivial higher rational cohomology groups
of this space. The main new ingredient is the construction of bundles
with base and fiber both products of spheres and non-vanishing
A-hat-genus. This is joint work with Jens Reinhold.