Seminars and Colloquia by Series

Teichmuller polynomials for a fibered face of the Thurston norm ball

Series
Geometry Topology Student Seminar
Time
Wednesday, March 13, 2013 - 13:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Hyunshik Shin – Georgia Tech
We will briefly talk about the introduction to Thruston norm and fibered face theory. Then we will discuss polynomial invariants for fibered 3-manifolds, so called Teichmuller polynomials. I will give an example for a Teichmuller polynomial and by using it, determine the stretch factors (dilatations) of a family of pseudo-Anosov homeomorphisms.

"Transverse knots and Khovanov homology"

Series
Geometry Topology Student Seminar
Time
Wednesday, March 6, 2013 - 13:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Alan Diaz – Georgia Tech
I'll discuss Plamenevskaya's invariant of transverse knots, how it can be used to determine tightness of contact structures on some 3-manifolds, and efforts to understand more about this invariant. This is an Oral Comprehensive Exam; the talk will last about 40 minutes.

Higher Prym Representations of the Mapping Class Group

Series
Geometry Topology Student Seminar
Time
Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - 11:05 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Becca Winarski – Georgia Tech
A conjecture of Ivanov asserts that finite index subgroups of the mapping class group of higher genus surfaces have trivial rational homology. Putman and Wieland use what they call higher Prym representations, which are extensions of the representation induced by the action of the mapping class group on homology, to better understand the conjecture. In particular, they prove that if Ivanov's conjecture is true for some genus g surface, it is true for all higher genus surfaces. On the other hand, they also prove that if there is a counterexample to Ivanov's conjecture, it is of a specific form.

Hyperbolicity of the Arc and Curve Complex

Series
Geometry Topology Student Seminar
Time
Wednesday, February 13, 2013 - 13:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Jamie Conway – Georgia Tech
Given any surface, we can construct its curve complex by considering isotopy classes of curves on the surface. If the surface has boundary, we can construct its arc complex similarly, with isotopy clasess of arcs, with endpoints on the boundary. In 1999, Masur and Minsky proved that these complexes are hyperbolic, but the proof is long and involved. This talk will discuss a short proof of the hyperbolicity of the curve and arc complex recently given by Hensel, Przytycki, and Webb.

The Arc Complex and Open Book Decompositions

Series
Geometry Topology Student Seminar
Time
Wednesday, January 30, 2013 - 13:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Meredith Casey – Georgia Tech
This is an expository talk on the arc complex and translation distance of open book decompositions. We will discuss curve complexes, arc complex, open books, and finally the application to contact manifolds.

Knots and Dynamics II

Series
Geometry Topology Student Seminar
Time
Wednesday, January 23, 2013 - 13:05 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006.
Speaker
Amey Kaloti – Georgia Tech
This is continuation of talk from last week. Periodic orbits of flows on $3$ manifolds show very rich structure. In this talk we will try to prove a theorem of Ghrist, which states that, there exists vector fields on $S^3$ whose set of periodic orbits contains every possible knot and link in $S^3$. The proof relies on template theory.

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