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Incompressible Surfaces in Punctured Torus Bundles, and the Ideal Points They Come From

Geometry/Topology

Speaker: Henry Segerman, Stanford University
Location: 2112 MSB
Start time: Wed, Apr 26 2006, 4:10PM

Culler and Shalen give us a way to produce incompressible surfaces in a 3-manifold from ideal points of its character variety. However, not much is known about the reverse direction: given an incompressible surface, does it come from an ideal point? I will talk about this question in the context of punctured torus bundles.