Professor Packer will study two topics under the general heading of twisted crossed product C* algebras: (i) the topological structure of the primitive ideal space of twisted group C* algebras related to nilpotent groups, and (ii) K- theoretic invariants for certain twisted crossed product C* algebras. The notion of a C* algebra is an abstraction of the idea of a family of linear transformations on a space. These transformations can also be thought of as having values in the states of the space, and the property of this family which is responsible for the symbol * is that the algebra is generated by transformations whose values in these states are real numbers. The fact that these objects appear naturally in many branches of mathematics and physics make them important to study.
