Introduction to group cohomology and a fixed point theorem
Abstract
Dehn surgery is a method of building three-dimensional manifolds that is ubiquitous throughout low-dimensional topology. I will give an introduction to Dehn surgery and discuss recent work with M. Kegel on the uniqueness of Dehn surgery descriptions of 3-manifolds. To do this, I will discuss the reason that Dehn surgery is so prominent - namely that it interacts very well with many structures, such as the geometry and gauge theory of 3-manifolds. (I will do my very best to assume very little background knowledge.)
The Department of Psychiatry are looking for volunteers aged 18–65 who are experiencing low mood or reduced motivation to take part in a study testing a 7-day course of Losartan (a licensed blood pressure medicine) or placebo, and psychological training focused on activity scheduling.
Participants who complete the study will be reimbursed at least £140, plus reasonable travel expenses for visits.
The dynamical Phi^4_3 model is a stochastic partial differential equation that arises in quantum field theory and statistical physics. Owing to the singular nature of the driving noise and the presence of a nonlinear term, the equation is inherently ill-posed. Nevertheless, it can be given a rigorous meaning, for example, through the framework of regularity structures. On compact domains, standard arguments show that any solution converges to the equilibrium state described by the unique invariant measure. Extending this result to infinite volume is highly nontrivial: even for the lattice version of the model, uniqueness holds only in the high-temperature regime, whereas at low temperatures multiple phases coexist.
We prove that, when the mass is sufficiently large or the coupling constant sufficiently small (that is, in the high-temperature regime), all solutions of the dynamical Phi^4_3 model in infinite volume converge exponentially fast to the unique stationary solution, uniformly over all initial conditions. In particular, this result implies that the invariant measure of the dynamics is unique, exhibits exponential decay of correlations, and is invariant under translations, rotations, and reflections.
Joint work with Martin Hairer, Jaeyun Yi, and Wenhao Zhao.
Thursday 22 January 2026, 5.00-6.00 pm Andrew Wiles Building. Please email @email to register to attend in person.