Seminars this week
Robert Lipshitz
We have a tag-team seminar this week: Eli Grigsby and Stephan Wehril will talk about their joint work at 9:30 and 10:45, respectively (Math 520). I think the first talk is intended to be more elementary than the second. They're both good speakers, and (obviously) I like the topic.
More details:
April 6, 2012, 9:30 am and 10:45 am, Math 520:
Eli Grigsby and Stephan Wehrli, "A relationship between Khovanov-type and Heegaard-Floer-type braid invariants I and II"
Abstract: Given a braid, one can associate to it a sequence of "categorified" braid invariants (one for each integer in a finite range) in two apparently different ways: "algebraically," via the higher representation theory of U_q(sl_2) (using work of Khovanov-Seidel, Chen-Khovanov, and Brundan-Stroppel), and "geometrically," using the bordered Floer invariants of its double-branched cover (defined by Lipshitz-Ozsvath-Thurston and reinterpreted by Auroux). In this two-part talk, we will describe what we know so far about the connection between these invariants, focusing on the relationship between the representation theory and the Floer theory.
The first part of the talk should be accessible to a "general" audience of topologists, and the second part will give more details about the constructions and the proofs. This is joint work with Denis Auroux.
We'll go to lunch afterwards, as usual. I look forward to seeing you there!
Robert