- Series
- Geometry Topology Student Seminar
- Time
- Wednesday, March 8, 2023 - 2:00pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
- Location
- Skiles 006
- Speaker
- Roberta Shapiro – Georgia Tech – rshapiro32@gatech.edu
- Organizer
- Daniel Minahan
The pants complex of a surface has as its 0-cells the pants decompositions of a surface and as its 1-cells some elementary moves relating two pants decompositions; the 2-cells are disks glued along certain cycles in the 1-skeleton of the complex. In "Pants Decompositions of Surfaces," Hatcher proves that this complex is contractible.
During this interactive talk, we will aim to understand the structure of the pants complex and some of the important tools that Hatcher uses in his proof of contractibility.