M392C Lie Groups



Meeting time and place:  Tu-Th 2-3:30, RLM 11.167.

Professor: Lorenzo Sadun, RLM 9.114, 471-7121, sadun@math.utexas.edu

Office Hours: TBA.  I generally keep an open door

Textbook: Lie Groups, and Introduction Through Linear Groups, by Wulf Rossmann.  This is available at the Coop.  If they run out, try Amazon or get it directly from the publisher (Oxford)

Homework: There will  be weekly problem sets, due on Thursdays.  The homework will not be as intense as, say, a prelim class, but it's important to do the work.  This isn't a class that you can just sit in on the lectures and master.

Collaboration: You are encouraged to work together on homework, and to explain your solutions to one another before turning them in.  The best way to tell whether you really know something is to try to explain it to somebody else. You may also put as many as 4 names on the homework paper.  However, anything turned in under your name should reflect your own personal understanding.  (Learning from one another is great -- giving each other free rides is self-destructive).

Exams:  There will not be any exams.

Term paper: You are expected to write a term paper, either alone or in collaboration with others.  An alternative to a written paper is to give an talk, probably on one of the "dead days" at the beginning of finals week.  Pick a theorem of Lie theory and discuss it.  You can explain its history, the ideas behind it, applications of it, different approaches to it, an elementary way of viewing it, or whatever you like.  The paper should be between 3+n and 4+2n pages, where n is the number of people in the collaboration. Your topic should be chosen by spring break, and the paper is due one week before the end of classes.

Grading:  If you do the bulk of the homework and do an adequate termpaper/talk, you get an A.  If you do one of the two, or if you do both and the work is shoddy, you get a B.  If you blow off the assignments, you get a C.

Syllabus:  It's not clear what pace we can sustain.  My goal is to cover the book and have a little time left over to discuss the geometry of symmetric spaces.  Whether that is realistic remains to be seen.