Geometry and Topology Seminar 2019-2020
The Geometry and Topology seminar meets in room 901 of Van Vleck Hall on Fridays from 1:20pm - 2:10pm.
For more information, contact Richard Kent.
Fall 2012
| date | speaker | title | host(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| September 7 | |||
| September 14 | |||
| September 21 | Owen Sizemore (Wisconsin) | local | |
| September 28 | |||
| October 5 | Ben Schmidt (Michigan State) | Dymarz | |
| October 12 | Ian Biringer (Boston College) | Dymarz | |
| October 19 | |||
| October 26 | Jo Nelson (Wisconsin) |
Cylindrical contact homology as a well-defined homology theory? Part I |
local |
| November 2 | Jennifer Taback (Bowdoin) | Dymarz | |
| November 9 | |||
| November 16 | |||
| Thanksgiving Recess | |||
| November 30 | Shinpei Baba (Caltech) | Kent | |
| December 7 | Kathryn Mann (Chicago) | Kent | |
| December 14 |
Fall Abstracts
Ben Schmidt (Michigan State)
"Three manifolds of constant vector curvature."
A Riemannian manifold M is said to have extremal curvature K if all sectional curvatures are bounded above by K or if all sectional curvatures are bounded below by K. A manifold with extremal curvature K has constant vector curvature K if every tangent vector to M belongs to a tangent plane of curvature K. For surfaces, having constant vector curvature is equivalent to having constant curvature. In dimension three, the eight Thurston geometries all have constant vector curvature. In this talk, I will discuss the classification of closed three manifolds with constant vector curvature. Based on joint work with Jon Wolfson.
Ian Biringer (Boston College)
TBA
Jo Nelson (Wisconsin)
Cylindrical contact homology as a well-defined homology theory? Part I
In this talk I will define all the concepts in the title, starting with what a contact manifold is. I will also explain how the heuristic arguments sketched in the literature since 1999 fail to define a homology theory and provide a foundation for a well-defined cylindrical contact homology, while still providing an invariant of the contact structure. A later talk will provide us with a large class of examples under which one can compute a well-defined version of cylindrical contact homology via a new approach the speaker developed for her thesis that is distinct and completely independent of previous specialized attempts.
Jennifer Taback (Bowdoin)
TBA
Shinpei Baba (Caltech)
TBA
Kathryn Mann (Chicago)
TBA
Spring 2013
| date | speaker | title | host(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| January 25 | |||
| February 1 | |||
| February 8 | |||
| February 15 | |||
| February 22 | |||
| March 1 | |||
| March 8 | |||
| March 15 | |||
| March 22 | Michelle Lee (Michigan) | Kent | |
| Spring Break | |||
| April 5 | |||
| April 12 | |||
| April 19 | |||
| April 26 | |||
| May 3 | |||
| May 10 |
Spring Abstracts
Michelle Lee (Michigan)
TBA
Archive of past Geometry seminars
2011-2012: Geometry_and_Topology_Seminar_2011-2012
2010: Fall-2010-Geometry-Topology