Laurent Smits: Lifting toric varieties over the sphere and elliptic cohomology

Abstract: One of the most fundamental objects in homotopy theory are spectra, the representing objects of cohomology theories. As it turns out it is quite effective to study spectra using techniques of algebraic geometry. In this talk I want to explain how homotopy theory and algebraic geometry can benefit from this interactions, primarily focusing on the applications to (equivariant) elliptic cohomology.