URegina Topology & Geometry Seminar: Francis Bischoff

I will start by giving a broad overview of our seminar so far, outlining the way in which characteristic classes arise from the cohomology of classifying spaces. When the coefficients for cohomology are the real numbers, the characteristic classes can be computed via de Rham cohomology. This approach is known as Chern-Weil theory. I will explain this approach to constructing characteristic classes, with a focus on the Chern classes of complex vector bundles.