SMS scnews item created by Haotian Wu at Sat 1 Oct 2016 1127
Type: Seminar
Modified: Wed 5 Oct 2016 1137; Wed 5 Oct 2016 1139
Distribution: World
Expiry: 8 Nov 2016
Calendar1: 5 Oct 2016 1200-1300
CalLoc1: Carslaw 535A
CalTitle1: Geometry & Topology: Multisections of manifolds
Auth: haotianw@14-202-233-61.static.tpgi.com.au (hawu2800) in SMS-WASM

Geometry & Topology

Multisections of manifolds

Stephan Tillmann (Sydney)

Wednesday 5 October 2016, 12:00–13:00 in Carslaw 535A.

Please join us for lunch after the talk!


Abstract: Dave Gay and Rob Kirby recently introduced trisections of smooth 4-manifolds arising from their study of broken Lefschetz fibrations and Morse 2-functions. Dave asked us if this could be established using triangulations. We have done this and extended the theory to all dimensions. The idea is to split a 2k- or (2k+1)-manifold into k handlebodies, such that intersections of the handlebodies have special properties. The splitting can be viewed as mapping the manifold into a k-simplex and pulling back a decomposition into dual cubes. I'll outline the construction, give some applications and conclude with open questions. This is joint work with Hyam Rubinstein.