Geometry and Topology Seminar
Bridge surfaces and the information they carry
Maggy Tomova, Rice University
Details
Wednesday November 28, 2007
809 Physical Sciences Center
4:00 pm / 3:30 tea
Abstract
Bridge number for knots in the 3-sphere is a classical knot invariant introduced by Schubert more than 50 years ago. More recently it has been generalized to knots in any manifold by using a Heegaard surface for the manifold in place of the bridge sphere. We will discuss some results about bridge surfaces that are analogous to results about Heegaard splittings as well as some of the behaviors of bridge surfaces that seem to have no Heegaard splitting analogs.