- Series
- Geometry Topology Seminar
- Time
- Monday, February 19, 2018 - 3:30pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
- Location
- Skiles 005
- Speaker
- Greg Kuperberg – UC Davis
- Organizer
- Caitlin Leverson
Now that the geometrization conjecture has been proven, and the virtual Haken conjecture has been proven, what is left in
3-manifold topology? One remaining topic is the computational complexity of geometric topology problems. How difficult is it to
distinguish the unknot? Or 3-manifolds from each other? The right approach to these questions is not just to consider quantitative
complexity, i.e., how much work they take for a computer; but also qualitative complexity, whether there are efficient algorithms with
one or another kind of help. I will discuss various results on this theme, such as that knottedness and unknottedness are both in NP; and
I will discuss high-dimensional questions for context.