Marcy Robertson

Date: December 9, 2021
Time: 12:00 am - 12:00 am
Location: Zoom (email sacha.ikonicoff at ucalgary.ca for more info)

Title: Automorphisms of seemed surfaces, modular operads and Galois actions

Abstract: The idea behind Grothendieck-Teichmüller theory is to study the absolute Galois group via its actions on (the collection of all) moduli spaces of genus g curves. In practice, this is often done by studying an intermediate object: The Grothendieck-Teichmüler group, GT. 

In this talk, I’ll describe an algebraic gadget built from simple decomposition data of Riemann surfaces. This gadget, called an infinity modular operad, provides a model for the collection of all moduli spaces of genus g curves with n boundaries, which we justify by showing that the automorphisms of this algebraic object is isomorphic to a subgroup of Grothendieck-Teichmüller group.