[Binghamton Geometry/Topology Seminar] May 3 (Dean's Speaker)

[Dmytro Savchuk]

                   BINGHAMTON GEOMETRY/TOPOLOGY SEMINAR

This week, we will have a lecturer in our *Dean's Speaker Series in
Geometry and Topology*, Francis Bonahon of University of Southern
California.


*Date:*  Thursday, May 3, 2012
*Time:*  2:50-3:50pm
*Place:*  Library North 2205 followed by coffee/tea in the Anderson Reading
Room.

*Speaker:*  Francis Bonahon (University of Southern California)
*Title:*  Character varieties of surfaces and Kauffman brackets*

Abstract:* My talk will involve two concepts which are apparently very
different. The character variety of a surface S, consisting of
homomorphisms from the fundamental group of S to a Lie group G, arises in
many different branches of mathematics. The classical Kauffman bracket is
an invariant of knots and links in space, closely related to the Jones
polynomial. When G = SL2(C), Turaev showed that the character variety can
be quantised by a generalisation of Kauffman brackets to the surface S. I
will discuss the classification problem for Kauffman brackets on S, with
results, conjectures and interesting examples. 10 May
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