Hadrien Espic: Intrinsic formality of the little discs operads

Abstract: I will talk about the proof given by Benoit Fresse and Thomas Willwacher of an intrinsic formality result for the operad \(D_n\) where n is greater than 3. I will start by introducing the relevant objects and structures. The proof itself then involves using an operadic version of the Sullivan adjunction from rational homotopy and studying a bicosimplicial complex capturing the obstruction to intrinsic formality. Proving intrinsic formality can then be reduced to showing that a certain graph complex has trivial homology in degree -1.