Caltech/USC/UCLA Joint Topology Seminar

Embeddings of contact manifolds

John Etnyre, Department of Mathematics, Georgia Institute of Technology,

TO BE HELD AT UCLA MS 6627

I will discuss recent results concerning embeddings and isotopies of one contact manifold into another. Such embeddings should be thought of as generalizations of transverse knots in 3-dimensional contact manifolds (where they have been instrumental in the development of our understanding of contact geometry). I will mainly focus on embeddings of contact 3-manifolds into contact 5-manifolds. In this talk I will discuss joint work with Ryo Furukawa aimed at using braiding techniques to study contact embeddings. Braided embeddings give an explicit way to represent some (maybe all) smooth embeddings and should be useful in computing various invariants. If time permits I will also discuss other methods for embedding and constructions one may perform on contact submanifolds.

Event Sponsors:

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For more information, please contact Mathematics Department by phone at 626-395-4335 or by email at [email protected].