Topology Seminar

Title: Generating families on Lagrangian cobordisms Abstract: An important question in contact topology is to understand Legendrian knots and their relations given by Lagrangian cobordisms. In the contact manifold T*M x R, an important tool to study Legendrian knots and their Lagrangian cobordisms is called generating families or generating functions, which are generalizations of the […]

Title: Cosmetic Surgeries on Knots and Heegaard Floer Homology Abstract: A common method of constructing 3-manifolds is via Dehn surgery on knots. A pair of surgeries on a knot is called purely cosmetic if the resulting 3-manifolds are homeomorphic as oriented manifolds, whereas it is said to be chirally cosmetic if they result in homeomorphic […]

Title: Contact structures and the mapping class group of lens spaces Abstract: One important problem in contact topology is to classify contact structures on a given manifold. Around 20 years ago, Giroux and Honda classified contact structures on lens spaces. A natural question to ask after that is how the transformations on lens spaces interact […]

On November 14th, Tuesday from 3-4pm in Fletcher 110, Geometry and Topology Seminar invites students and faculty to a course preview session devoted to a discussion and presentations about upcoming Spring 2024 courses in geometry, topology and/or with applications in geometry and topology to help students make their enrollment choices. We will have some refreshments […]

Title: Skein Theory of Affine ADE Subfactor Planar Algebras Abstract: Subfactor planar algebras first were constructed by Vaughan Jones as a diagrammatic axiomatization of the standard invariant of a subfactor. These planar algebras also encode two other invariants of the subfactors: the index and the principal graph. The Kuperberg Program asks to find all diagrammatic […]

We welcome all undergraduates and graduate students to attend topology seminar! Speaker: Song Yu (California Institute of Technology and Tsinghua Yau Mathematical Sciences Center) also a Pomona alum! Title: Knot invariants, Gromov-Witten invariants, and integrality conjectures Abstract: In this talk, we will take a peek at large N duality which is a deep correspondence between invariants […]

We welcome all undergraduates and graduate students to attend topology seminar! Speaker: Luya Wang (Stanford) Title: Deformation inequivalent symplectic structures and Donaldson's four-six question Abstract: Studying symplectic structures up to deformation equivalences is a fundamental question in symplectic geometry. Donaldson asked: given two homeomorphic closed symplectic four-manifolds, are they diffeomorphic if and only if their […]

We welcome all undergraduates and graduate students to attend topology seminar! Speaker: Puttipong Pongtanapaisan (Arizona State University) Title: Building Knotted Objects Efficiently Abstract: Knotted objects can be constructed by gluing together standard pieces called handles. Understanding the minimum number of handles required for construction and their sequential attachment provides valuable insights into the complexity of entanglement. […]

No Seminar

We welcome all undergraduates and graduate students to attend topology seminar! Speaker: Adam Yassine (Pomona College) Title: A Structural Approach to Classical Mechanics Abstract: A structural approach to the study of classical mechanics clarifies the physical heuristics that physicists use in constructing mathematical models of classical mechanical systems. The focus of our current program is to develop […]

This talk has been cancelled. We welcome all undergraduates and graduate students to attend topology seminar! Speaker: Iris Yoon (Wesleyan College) Title: A generalized Dowker complex for multi-way Relations Abstract: Given a relation between two sets X and Y, one can construct two simplicial complexes, one having X as its vertex set and the other […]

We welcome all undergraduates and graduate students to attend topology seminar! Speaker: Qing Zhang (UC Santa Barbara) Title: Super-modular categories from near-group centers Abstract: A super-modular category is a unitary pre-modular category with Müger center equivalent to the symmetric unitary category of super-vector spaces. The modular data for a super-modular category gives a projective representation […]