Geometry and Topology Seminar (3/3)

Associated to every Lie group G there is a classifying space BG for principal BG-bundles. This classifying space BG is a "delooping" of G in the sense that its loop space is homotopy equivalent to G. In this talk I will survey the rich literature around deloopings of compact manifolds (this means BG as well as more exotic deloopings), which involves a beautiful mix of homotopy theory, Lie theory, and p-adic analysis.