Chennai Mathematical Institute

Seminars




3.30 pm
Descent and Cohomological Descent

Nitin Nitsure
TIFR, Mumbai.
01-08-13


Abstract

Around 1960, Grothendieck developed the theory of descent. The aim of this theory is to construct geometric objects on a base space -- in particular bundles, sheaves and their sections -- in terms a generalized covering space which is visualized to lie `upstairs' over the base space. The objects over the base space are obtained by `descending' similar objects from the covering space.
In late 1960s-early 1970s, Deligne addressed the problem of how to understand cohomology of the base space via cohomology of a covering, by this time descending cohomology classes (instead of just descending global sections of sheaves, which is the case of 0th cohomology). The theory developed by Deligne, known as `Cohomological Descent' has found important applications to Hodge theory and to cohomology of algebraic stacks.
In this expository talk, I will begin with a quick look at Grothendieck's theory of descent, and then go on to give a brief introduction to Deligne's theory of Cohomological Descent.