Fox and Hedgehog Seminar Series - 'Quantum groups and cohomological Hall algebras'

Quantum groups are deformations of universal enveloping algebras of Lie algebras. But where do these deformations come from? I'll discuss a compelling addition to the possible ways to answer this question, coming from adding equivariant parameters to cohomological Hall algebras. I won't assume that you know what these algebras are, and I certainly won't assume that anyone knows how to calculate with these things: giving a first glimpse into how one can start to do calculations in cohomological Hall algebras will be one of the main points of the talk.