What is ... Equivariant Cohomology?

Abstract

When a torus acts on a compact oriented manifold with isolated fixed points, the equivariant localization formula of Atiyah--Bott--Berline--Vergne converts the integral of an equivariantly closed form to a finite sum over the fixed points, providing a powerful tool for computing integrals on a manifold. This article seeks to give an accessible exposition of the equivariant localization formula.