[Binghamton Geometry/Topology Seminar] 2 talks December 3 by Peter Scott

[Marco Varisco]

Binghamton Geometry/Topology Seminar
http://www.math.binghamton.edu/dept/topsem/

Two talks are scheduled for this Thursday.


-- First talk: Dean's Speaker Series in Geometry/Topology --

Date: Thursday, December 3, 2009

Time: 2:50-3:50 pm

Place: Library North 2205
(followed by coffee/tea in the Anderson Reading Room)

Speaker: Peter Scott (University of Michigan)

Title: Splittings of groups and manifolds

Abstract: In the mid 1970's, Jaco and Shalen, and independently
Johannson, proved that Haken 3-manifolds have a canonical submanifold
(possibly empty) called the characteristic submanifold, and they
showed that this submanifold has some important properties. Starting
in the mid 1980's, there has been a whole series of algebraic results
which describe analogous results in group theory. However, none of
these results yields as much information as the topological result
when applied to the fundamental group of a Haken 3-manifold.
In this talk, I will discuss joint work with Gadde Swarup of the
University of Melbourne in which we give a new approach to this area.
We obtain new algebraic results which yield the topological result
when applied to the fundamental group of a Haken 3-manifold.
The aim of the talk will be to convey the basic ideas of our approach
rather than all the details!


-- Second talk --

Date: Thursday, December 3, 2009

Time: 4:30-5:30 pm
(preceded by coffee/tea in the Anderson Reading Room)

Place: Library North 2205

Speaker: Peter Scott (University of Michigan)

Title: A combinatorial approach to harmonic maps

Abstract: I will discuss joint work with Hass on a combinatorial
approach to harmonic maps. This work is still in progress. Such an
approach has been used previously by other authors for computational
reasons, but we are developing our approach with an eye to theoretical
applications. Some applications in low dimensional topology will be
discussed.