Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

We show that after stabilizations of opposite parity and braid isotopy, any twobraids in the same topological link type cobound embedded annuli. We use this to prove thegeneralized Jones conjecture relating the braid index and algebraic length of closed braidswithin a link type, following a reformulation of the problem by Kawamuro. This is joint workwith Doug Lafountain.

The notion of distance for a Heegaard splitting of athree-dimensional manifold $M$, introduced by John Hempel, has provedto be a very powerful tool for understanding the geometry and topologyof $M$.

Let MCG(g) be the mapping class group of a surface of genus g. For sufficiently large g, the nth homology (and cohomology) group of MCG(g) is independent of g. Hence we say that the family of mapping class groups satisfies homological stability. Symmetric groups and braid groups also satisfy homological stability, as does the family of moduli spaces of certain higher dimensional manifolds. The proofs of homological stability for most families of groups and spaces follow the same basic structure, and

The scissors congruence group of polytopes in $\mathbb{R}^n$ is defined tobe the free abelian group on polytopes in $\mathbb{R}^n$ modulo tworelations: $[P] = [Q]$ if $P\cong Q$, and $[P \cup P'] = [P] + [P']$ if$P\cap P'$ has measure $0$. This group, and various generalizations of it,has been studied extensively through the lens of homology of groups byDupont and Sah.

Contact geometry in three dimensions is a land of two disjoint classes ofcontact structures; overtwisted vs. tight. The former ones are flexible,means their geometry is determined by algebraic topology of underlying twoplane fields. In particular their existence and classification areunderstood completely. Tight contact structure, on the other hand, arerigid. The existence problem of a tight contact structure on a fixed threemanifold is hard and still widely open. The classification problem is evenharder.

In this talk we will extend the sutured product disk decompositions from the last talk to construct foliations on some knot complements and see how this can help understand the minimal genus of Seifert surfaces for knots and links.

Gabai has a nice criteria for recognizing fibered knots in 3-manifolds. This criteria is best described in terms of sutured manifolds and simple sutured hierarchies. We will introduce this terminology and prove Gabai's result. Given time (or in subsequent talks) we might discuss generalizations concerning constructing foliations on knot compliments and 3-manifolds in general. Such results are very useful in understanding the minimal genus representatives of homology classes in the manifold (in particular, the minimal genus of a Seifert surface for a knot).