On knots and 4-manifolds

by Prof. Paul Wedrich (Universität Hamburg)

Tuesday 18 Oct 2022, 17:00 → 18:00 Europe/Berlin

H4 (Geomatikum)

This talk will start with a gentle introduction into the mathematical study of knotted structures in the research field of low-dimensional topology. Particular emphasis will lie on how knots serve as data structure for 3- and 4-dimensional manifolds, and how knot invariants can be tricked into revealing information about such spaces. The final goal of the talk is to present a recently discovered formula for the computation of a new kind of invariant for oriented smooth 4-manifolds via a `Kirby color for Khovanov homology'.