Symplectic Geometry, Gauge Theory, and Low-Dimensional Topology Seminar
Monday November 11th, 2024
Time: 12:30 PM - 1:55 PM
Title: Towards a stable homotopy refinement of Legendrian contact homology
Speaker: Robert Lipshitz, University of Oregon
Location: Math P-131
Abstract:
The Chekanov-Eliashberg dga, or Legendrian contact homology, was the first modern invariant of Legendrian knots in R^3. This talk is a progress report on a project to give a stable homotopy refinement of Legendrian contact homology, inducing operations like Steenrod squares on linearized Legendrian contact homology. In general, contact homology is defined by counting J-holomorphic curves, but in this case those counts reduce to the Riemann Mapping Theorem and the invariant is described purely combinatorially, from an appropriate knot diagram, and our refinement has a similarly combinatorial flavor. After recalling the basics of Legendrian knot theory and Legendrian contact homology, we will outline our program to refine it, sketch its status, and perhaps describe some examples. This is joint with Lenhard Ng and Sucharit Sarkar.