Determinants, bundles and Chern classes

Starting with the Fredholm determinant, I will describe various extensions of the determinant from matrices to operators. In particular I will indicate how the determinant bundle, with connection, for Dirac operators (as introduced by Quillen then Bismut and Freed) can be defined directly on groups of pseudodifferential operators and the relation of this to work of Kontsevich and Vishik.

Refreshments will be served in Math Annex Room 1115, 3:15 p.m.