Viva Talbot! @ MIT 📶

Operads are objects that govern categories of algebras. Initially introduced in the sixties to study iterated loop spaces, they have proved useful in several areas of mathematics. In most of these applications, the little disks operads play a central role. In the first part of this talk, we will focus on one of the applications studied in the 2015 Talbot Workshop, Goodwillie–Weiss embedding calculus, which will serve as an “excuse” to introduce operads. In the second part of this talk, I will set out some of the recent developments regarding the links between the little disks operads and the real homotopy types of configuration spaces of manifolds. (Second part based on joint works with Ricardo Campos, Julien Ducoulombier, Pascal Lambrechts, and Thomas Willwacher.)