PhD Student Research Seminar

Pat Naylor, Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo

"Diagrammatic Methods in Topology"

A recent tool for understanding 4-manifolds is something called a “trisection.” These have the interesting advantage of changing problems about 4-manifolds to problems of combinatorics on surfaces. This talk will be an (accessible) tourist’s guide to some background and similar ideas from low(er) dimensional topology: Heegaard splittings and diagrams. Time permitting, we’ll also introduce a trisection and discuss some recent developments.  

MC 5403