Tuesday Seminar on Topology

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Date, time & place Tuesday 17:00 - 18:30 056Room #056 (Graduate School of Math. Sci. Bldg.)
Organizer(s) KAWAZUMI Nariya, KITAYAMA Takahiro, SAKASAI Takuya

2008/05/13

16:30-18:00   Room #056 (Graduate School of Math. Sci. Bldg.)
Tamas Kalman (東京大学大学院数理科学研究科, JSPS)
The problem of maximum Thurston--Bennequin number for knots
[ Abstract ]
Legendrian submanifolds of contact 3-manifolds are
one-dimensional, just like knots. This ``coincidence'' gives rise to an
interesting and expanding intersection of contact and symplectic geometry
on the one hand and classical knot theory on the other. As an
illustration, we will survey recent results on maximizing the
Thurston--Bennequin number (which is a measure of the twisting of the
contact structure along a Legendrian) within a smooth knot type. In
particular, we will show how Kauffman's state circles can be used to solve
the maximization problem for so-called +adequate (among them, alternating
and positive) knots and links.