special meeting of the seminar next Monday

[Mikhail Khovanov]

Dear all,

There'll be a special meeting of the Symplectic Geometry seminar next Monday May 2, 1:10pm-2:10pm in room 507.

Edmund Heng (ICERM and Australia National University) will visit us and give a talk:

Title: Categorification and Dynamics for Generalized Braid Groups.

Abstract: The generalised braid groups (also known as Artin-Tits groups) are a family of groups which can be viewed as lifts of Coxeter groups. One of the attempt to understand generalised braid groups is to study their action on surfaces. The pitfall, however, is that certain generalised braid groups are known to not have faithful actions on surfaces. 

In this talk, I will introduce a way to overcome this hurdle through categorification, where we study generalised braid groups as (sub)groups of autoequivalences of triangulated categories instead. Building upon a striking analogy between the Teichmuller theory of surfaces and Bridgeland’s theory of stability conditions, this allows us to study dynamical properties of generalised braid groups, similar to the study of dynamics in surfaces. Focusing on the rank two generalised braid groups, we prove a categorical version of the Nielsen-Thurston classification theorem. 

The content of this talk is part of my PhD thesis.

Best,

Mikhail

[Mikhail Khovanov]

Reminder of a special seminar tomorrow (Monday May 2) at 1:10pm.