Mathematics Colloquium



Department of Mathematics
University of Nebraska at Omaha


WHEN:
Thursday, September 13, 2007 at 2:30 PM

WHERE:
Durham Science Center, Room 116

WHAT:


Dr. Robert Todd

University of Nebraska at Omaha


will give a talk on

An Introduction to Khovanov Homology with Steps Toward an Explicit Cobordism Functor


ABSTRACT:
Given a link the Jones polynomial of the link is a laurent polynomial which is an invariant of the link. There is a stronger invariant, the Khovanov homology, which associates to a diagram of a link a chain complex, whose homology is a an invariant of the link and whose graded Euler characteristic is the Jones polynomial. We will look into these definitions from two perspectives and then talk about another chain complex whose homology is related to the space of chain maps between the Khovanov complexes for two links. The majority of this talk will be introductory.  


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