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Heegaard Floer homology
Student-Run Geometry/Topology Seminar| Speaker: | Mike Williams, UC Davis |
| Location: | 2112 MSB |
| Start time: | Thu, Oct 19 2006, 11:00AM |
I will discuss invariants (due to P. Ozsvath and Z. Szabo) for a closed, oriented rational homology 3-sphere. Roughly speaking, the invariants stem from a chain complex generated by intersections of compressing disks in a genus $g$ Heegaard splitting; the boundary maps count ``holomorphic Whitney disks" in the $g$-fold symmetric product of the Heegaard surface. Some applications to knot theory will also be discussed. Background in algebraic and differential topology will be assumed.