26 May 2010, General Mathematics Colloquium, Alessandra Palmigiano

Quantales are very simple ordered algebras which can be thought of as pointfree noncommutative topologies. In recent years, their connections have been studied with fundamental notions in noncommutative geometry such as groupoids and C*-algebras. In particular, the class of quantales corresponding to certain very well behaved groupoids (the etale groupoids) has been identified by means of a non-functorial duality. However, there are very interesting examples of groupoids that do not belong to this class. For instance, groupoids that arise from group actions on topological spaces. In a joint work with Riccardo Re, the non-functorial duality has been extended to these latter groupoids as well. In the talk, I will introduce this line of research, sketch the main ideas of the duality, and discuss some examples.

http://www.science.uva.nl/research/math/Calendar/colloq/