Kirby moves for contact 3–manifolds

Series
Geometry Topology Seminar
Time
Monday, October 26, 2026 - 2:00pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Vera Vértesi – University of Vienna
Organizer
John Etnyre

In this talk I will present a complete set of Legendrian Kirby moves relating diagrams of the same contact 3–manifold, yielding a contact analogue of Kirby's theorem. Our approach refines Avdek's ribbon moves by using Gervais' presentation of mapping class groups using only nonseparating curves, together with explicit constructions of Legendrian representatives. This is a joint work with with Marc Kegel and Eric Stenhede.