Mathematics Colloquia and Seminars

Return to Colloquia & Seminar listing

Affine permutations and pattern avoidance

Algebra & Discrete Mathematics

Speaker: Andrew Crites, University of Washinton
Location: 1147 MSB
Start time: Fri, Mar 4 2011, 2:10PM

In this talk I will introduce some of the combinatorics behind affine permutations. These are a generalization of classical permutations that, when viewed as a reflection group, amount to adding an affine reflection to the set of generators (hence the name). We now end up with an infinite group, however, many of the same results from classical permutations still hold. Classifying families of permutations in terms of the patterns they avoid has been studied for a long time. However, applying pattern avoidance to affine permutations is fairly new. I will discuss pattern avoidance, and in particular, the role it plays in the geometry of the corresponding affine Schubert varieties. Part of this talk is joint work with Sara Billey.