Knots in contact 3-manifolds

Series
Geometry Topology Seminar
Time
Friday, October 10, 2008 - 2:00pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 269
Speaker
Vera Vertesi – School of Mathematics, Georgia Tech
Organizer
John Etnyre
In this talk I will give a purely combinatorial description of Knot Floer Homology for knots in the three-sphere (Manolescu-Ozsvath-Szabo- Thurston). In this homology there is a naturally associated invariant for transverse knots. This invariant gives a combinatorial but still an effective way to distinguish transverse knots (Ng-Ozsvath-Thurston). Moreover it leads to the construction of an infinite family of non-transversely simple knot-types (Vertesi).