Jyotirmoy Ganguly: 1st and 2nd Stiefel-Whitney Classes of Representations of the Symmetric Group
Channel: Amritanshu Prasad
Date: 2020-04-23

A representation (π,V) of Sn can be regarded as a homomorphism to an orthogonal group O(V). One can define Stiefel-Whitney classes wi(π) of these representations as members of the cohomology groups Hi(Sn,Z/2Z) , for 0≤i≤degπ. Here Z/2Z is trivial as an Sn module. In this talk we will compute the first and second Stiefel-Whitney classes of π  in terms of character values. This is joint work with Steven Spallone.