Geometric categories and o-minimal structures

Time

Mar 25 2008 - 3:30pm - 4:30 pm

Location

SM 3082

Speaker

Chris Miller (OSU)

Seminar Website

http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~jlafont/TopSched.html

Abstract

The theory of subanalytic sets is an excellent tool in various 
analytic-geometric contexts. We axiomatize the notion of "behaving like
the category of subanalytic sets" by introducing the notion of
analytic-geometric category. The objects of such a category share many of
the hereditary and geometric finiteness properties of subanalytic sets.
Proofs of the more difficult results of this nature, like the
Whitney-stratifiability of sets and maps in such a category, often involve
the use of charts to reduce to the case of subsets of R^n. For subsets of
R^n, the theory of o-minimal structures on the real field, an abstraction
of the theory of semialgebraic sets (and the subject of Math 949 in Sp08)
provides an elegant and efficient setting in which to work.

Certain fairly natural sets---like {(x,x^r):x>0} for positive irrational
r, and {(x,e^{-1/x}): x>0}---are not subanalytic (at the origin) in R^2.
Because there are o-minimal structures on the real field which include
these sets, we now have analytic-geometric categories which include these
sets among its objects.
Last updated by Jean-Francois Lafont on 03/24/08