How not to prove the smooth 4-dimensional Poincare conjecture

Series
Geometry Topology Seminar
Time
Tuesday, April 19, 2016 - 1:00pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
David Gay – University of Georgia
Organizer
John Etnyre

Please Note: Please note different day and time for the seminar

In honor of John Stallings' great paper, "How not to prove the Poincare conjecture", I will show how to reduce the smooth 4-dimensional Poincare conjecture to a (presumably incredibly difficult) statement in group theory. This is joint work with Aaron Abrams and Rob Kirby. We use trisections where Stallings used Heegaard splittings.