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Thurston's view on the space of complex polynomials

Geometry/Topology

Speaker: Harry Baik, Cornell University
Location: 2112 MSB
Start time: Tue, Apr 9 2013, 3:10PM

For about last two years, Thurston tried to have a global understanding on the geometry of complex polynomials (and even rational maps). One of the main tools was d-invariant laminations (laminations on the unit circle in the complex plane invariant under the map f(z)= z^d). We show that the space of d-invariant laminations embeds into the space of monic centered complex polynomials as a spine of the complement of the discriminant locus. We will work out explicitly in the case d=3. This is a part of the joint work with John Hubbard, Tan Lei, Kathryn Linsey, and Gao Yan to complete Thurston's original manuscript which misses many details.