Seminars and Colloquia by Series

Colored Jones polynomials and Volume Conjecture, I

Series
Geometry Topology Student Seminar
Time
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 11:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Thao Vuong – Georgia Tech
I will give an example of transforming a knot into closed braid form using Yamada-Vogel algorithm. From this we can write down the corresponding element of the knot in the braid group. Finally, the definition of a colored Jones polynomial is given using a Yang-Baxter operator. This is a preparation for next week's talk by Anh.

2-dimensional TQFTs and Frobenius Algebras

Series
Geometry Topology Student Seminar
Time
Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - 11:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Alan Diaz – Georgia Tech
( This will be a continuation of last week's talk. )An n-dimensional topological quantum field theory is a functor from the category of closed, oriented (n-1)-manifolds and n-dimensional cobordisms to the category of vector spaces and linear maps. Three and four dimensional TQFTs can be difficult to describe, but provide interesting invariants of n-manifolds and are the subjects of ongoing research. This talk focuses on the simpler case n=2, where TQFTs turn out to be equivalent, as categories, to Frobenius algebras. I'll introduce the two structures -- one topological, one algebraic -- explicitly describe the correspondence, and give some examples.

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