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Applying Quantum Representations of Mapping Class Groups (Wade Bloomquist, UCSB)
February 28, 2019 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
One foundational pillar of low dimensional topology is the connection between link invariants and 3-manifold invariants. One generalization of this has been given by Reshetikhin and Turaev to a surgery theory for colored ribbon graphs. Then to complete the analogy rather than 3-manifold invariants we now have a 2+1 dimensional topology quantum field theory (TQFT). For this talk we will only be focusing on one corner of a TQFT, in particular the representations of mapping class groups which are afforded (called quantum representations). We will first go through a brief construction of these representations, focusing on how colored ribbon graphs give rise to a basis. Then we will dive into some applications of these representations both in recovering classical topology and in a proposal for a topological quantum computing protocol. A strong effort will be made to keep things relatively self contained with as many pictures as possible.