Claremont Topology Seminar

The Claremont Topology Seminar meets on Tuesday's from 3:00-4:00 pm in Millikan 2099, Pomona College. Millikan is located on the NE corner of College Avenue and 6th Street. Following the talk we go for coffee/tea in downtown Claremont. Sometimes we meet a little later and then go to dinner. (Look for special times on the calendar.) Click here for a map of the Pomona Campus.

To reach Pomona College from the 10 freeway, exit at Indian Hill, go north, turn right (east) on 6th street and then turn left (north) on College. To reach Pomona College from the 210 freeway, if traveling East, exit at Towne Avenue, turn right (south) on Towne, turn left (east) on Foothill Blvd, and turn right (south) onto College Avenue. If traveling West on the 210 freeway, exit at Baseline/Padua, turn right (west) onto Baseline, turn left (south) onto Padua at the first light, turn right (west) onto Foothill Blvd at the third light, turn left (south) onto College Avenue.

Parking on College Avenue is free.

For more information about the Seminar, or to suggest speakers, contact Jim Hoste , Dave Bachman , Sam Nelson , Erica Flapan or Vin de Silva.

Fall, 2015

special days, times or locations are in red

 Date Speaker Title and Abstract Tuesday Sept 8 3:00 pm Organizational Meeting Meet at Some Crust Bakery for organizational meeting. Tuesday Sept 15 3:00 pm Jim Hoste Pitzer College Title: Involutory quandles of Montesinos Links I will show how to compute the involutory quandle of the (1/2, 1/2, p/q;e)-Montesinos links and discuss some of he properties of these quandles. This is part of a larger project to classify all links with finite n-quandles. This is joint work with Patrick Shanahan. Tuesday Sept 22 3:00 pm Sam Nelson Claremnt McKenna College Title: Biquandle brackets Abstract: Given a finite biquandle X and a commutative ring with identity R, we define an algebraic structure known as a biquandle bracket. Biquandle brackets can be used to define a family of knot and link invariants known as quantum enhancements which include biquandle cocycle invariants and skein polynomials such as the Alexander, Jones and HOMFLYpt polynomials as special cases. As an application we will see a new skein invariant which is not determined by the knot group, the knot quandle or the HOMFLYpt polynomial. Tuesday Sept 29 3:00 pm Satyan Devadoss Williams College Title: Origami Folding and Evolutionary Trees Abstract: In the past 25 years, origami has seen a tremendous explosion, in the arts, the sciences, and in technology. The mathematical theory of origami, in many ways, is at its infancy. There is a simple relationship between origami folds and geometric trees, obtained simply by looking at the crease lines of a piece of folded polygonal paper. In genetics, such trees play an important role in capturing the evolutionary process of species. We try to show a natural map between these worlds, of spaces of polygons and spaces of metric trees, and ask some foundational questions about this map. The heavy lifting of our work is done by an analogous version of a beautiful rigidity result of Cauchy from 1813. Tuesday Oct 6 3:00 pm Caitlin Leverson Duke University Title: Legendrian knots and links Abstract: Given a plane field $dz-xdy$ in $\mathbb{R}^3$. A Legendrian knot is a knot which at every point is tangent to the plane at that point. One can similarly define a Legendrian knot in any contact 3-manifold (manifold with a plane field satisfying some conditions). In this talk, we will explore Legendrian knots in $\mathbb{R}^3$, $J^1(S^1)$, and $\#^k(S^1\times S^2)$ as well a few Legendrian knot invariants. We will also look at the relationships between a few of these knot invariants. No knowledge of Legendrian knots will be assumed though some knowledge of basic knot theory would be useful. Tuesday Oct 13 3:00 pm Jeremy Toulisse University of Southern California Tuesday Oct 20 3:00 pm No Meeting Fall Break Tuesday Oct 27 3:00 pm Kenji Kozai UC Berkeley Tuesday Nov 3 12:15-1:10 pm Alissa Crans Loyola Marymount College Tuesday Nov 10 3:00 pm Faramarz Vafaee California Institute of Technology Tuesday Nov 17 3:00 pm Diana Hubbard Boston College Tuesday Nov 24 3:00 pm Tuesday Dec 1 3:00 pm Julie Bergner UC Riverside Tuesday Dec 8 3:00 pm Andy Manion UCLA

Spring 2016 Schedule

special days, times or locations are in red

 Date Speaker Title and Abstract Tuesday Jan 26 Tuesday Feb 2 Tengren Zhang California Institute of Technology Tuesday Feb 9 Tuesday Feb 16 Tuesday Feb 23 Tuesday Mar 1 Tuesday Mar 8 Tuesday Mar 15 3:00 pm No Meeting Spring Break Tuesday Mar 22 Tuesday Mar 29 Tuesday Apr 5 Tuesday Apr 12 Tuesday Apr 19 Tuesday Apr 26 Tuesday May 3

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