Invariants of Legendrian knots

Series
Geometry Topology Seminar
Time
Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - 2:00pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Caitlin Leverson – Duke University
Organizer
John Etnyre
Given a plane field $dz-xdy$ in $\mathbb{R}^3$. A Legendrian knot is a knot which at every point is tangent to the plane at that point. One can similarly define a Legendrian knot in any contact 3-manifold (manifold with a plane field satisfying some conditions). In this talk, we will explore Legendrian knots in $\mathbb{R}^3$, $J^1(S^1)$, and $\#^k(S^1\times S^2)$ as well as a few Legendrian knot invariants. We will also look at the relationships between a few of these knot invariants. No knowledge of Legendrian knots will be assumed though some knowledge of basic knot theory would be useful.