Universität Augsburg

In this talk, I will sketch a geometrically flavoured proof of the 
Madsen-Weiss theorem based on work by Eliashberg-Galatius-Mishachev.
In order to prove the triviality of appropriate relative bordism groups, 
in a first step a variant of the wrinkling theorem shows
that one can reduce to consider fold maps (with additional structure). 
In a subsequent step, a geometric version of the Harer stability
theorem is used to get rid of the folds via surgery. I will focus on 
this second step.

The usual finite dimensional Grassmannians are well known to be classifying spaces for vector bundles. It is maybe a less known fact that one has certain natural connections on the Stiefel bundles over them, which also have a universality property. I will show how these connections are constructed and explain how this viewpoint can be used to rediscover Chern-Weil theory. Finally, we will see how a certain stabilized version of this, called the restricted Grassmannian, admits a similar construction, which can be used to show that it is a smooth classifying space for differential K-theory.

We study the behavior of atomistic models under uniaxial tension and investigate the system for critical fracture loads. We rigorously prove that in the discrete-to- continuum limit the minimal energy satisfies a particular cleavage law with quadratic response to small boundary displacements followed by a sharp constant cut-off beyond some critical value. Moreover, we show that the minimal energy is attained by homogeneous elastic configurations in the subcritical case and that beyond critical loading cleavage along specific crystallographic hyperplanes is energetically favorable. We present examples of mass spring models with full nearest and next-to-nearest pair interactions and provide the limiting minimal energy and minimal configurations.