Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

Harer's homology stability theorem states that the homology of the mapping class group for oriented surfaces of genus g with n boundary components is independent of g for low degrees, increasing with g. Therefore the (co)homology of the mapping class group stabilizes. In this talk, we present Tillmann's result that the classifying space of the stable mapping class group is homotopic to an infinite loop space.

Much effort in the past several decades has gone into lifting various algebraic structures into a topological context. I will describe one such lifting: that of the arithmetic theory of elliptic curves. The result is a rich and highly structured family of cohomology theories collectively known as elliptic cohomology. By forming "global sections" one is led to a topological enrichment of the ring of modular forms. Geometric interpretations of these theories are enticing but still conjectural at best.

Existence of a tight contact structure on a closed oriented three manifold is still widely open problem. In this talk we will present some work in progress to answer this problem for manifolds that are obtained by Dehn surgery on a knot in three sphere. Our method involves on one side generalizing certain geometric methods due to Baldwin, on the other unfolds certain homological algebra methods due to Ozsvath and Szabo.

Complex-oriented cohomology theories are a class of generalized cohomology theories with special properties with respect to orientations of complex vector bundles. Examples include all ordinary cohomology theories, complex K-theory, and (our main theory of interest) complex cobordism.In two talks on these cohomology theories, we'll construct and discuss some examples and study their properties. Our ultimate goal will be to state and understand Quillen's theorem, which at first glance describes a close relationship between complex cobordism and formal group laws.

In the 1980’s Furuta and Fintushel-Stern applied the theory of instantons and Chern-Simons invariants to develop a criterion for a collection of Seifert fibred homology spheres to be independent in the homology cobordism group of oriented homology 3-spheres.

Solutions to the Yang-Baxter equation are one source of representations of the braid group. Solutions are difficult to find in general, but one systematic method to find some of them is via the theory of quantum groups. In this talk, we will introduce the Yang-Baxter equation, braided bialgebras, and the quantum group U_q(sl_2). Then we will see how to obtain the Burau and Lawrence-Krammer representations of the braid group as summands of natural representations of U_q(sl_2).