Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

I will revisit the relation between Anosov 3-flows and invariant volume forms, from a contact geometric point of view. Consequently, I will give a contact geometric characterization of when a flow with dominated splitting is Anosov based on its divergence, as well as a Reeb dynamical interpretation of when such flows are volume preserving. Moreover, I will discuss the implications of this study on the surgery theory of Anosov 3-flows. In particular, I will conclude that the Goodman-Fried surgery of Anosov flows can be reconstructed, using a bi-contact surgery of Salmoiraghi.

One interesting question in low-dimensional topology is to understand the structure of mapping class group of a given manifold. In dimension 2, this topic is very well studied. The structure of this group is known for various 3-manifolds as well (ref- Hatcher's famous work on Smale's conjecture). But virtually nothing is known in dimension 4. In this talk I will try to motivate why this problem in dimension 4 is interesting and how it is different from dimension 2 and 3. I will demonstrate some "exotic" phenomena and if time permits, I will talk a few words on my upcoming work with Jianfeng Lin. 

Given a surface S, the Alexander method is a combinatorial tool used to determine whether two homeomorphisms are isotopic. This statement was formalized in A Primer on Mapping Class Groups in the case that S is of finite type. We extend the Alexander method to include infinite-type surfaces, which are surfaces with infinitely generated fundamental groups.

In this talk, we will introduce a technique useful in proofs dealing with infinite-type surfaces. Then, we provide a "proof by example" of an infinite-type analogue of the Alexander method.

Embedding problems, of an n-manifold into an m-manifold, can be heuristically thought to belong to a spectrum, from rigid, to flexible. Euclidean embeddings define the rigid end of the spectrum, meaning you can only translate or rotate an object into the target. Symplectic embeddings, depending on the object, and target, can show up anywhere on the spectrum, and it is this flexible vs rigid philosophy, and techniques developed to study them, that has lead to a lot of interesting mathematics. In this talk I will make this heuristic clearer, and show some examples and applications of these embedding problems.