EVENT DETAILS AND ABSTRACT

Title: Categorified invariants and the Artin braid group
Speaker: Eli Grigsby
Speaker Info: Boston College
Brief Description:
Special Note:
Abstract:

I will describe a "categorified" combinatorial braid conjugacy class invariant arising naturally from Khovanov's homology theory for links in S^3 and prove it is strong enough to detect the trivial braid conjugacy class. Time permitting, I will mention a conjectural relationship between this invariant and a categorification of the U_q(sl_2) Reshetikhin-Turaev braid invariant due to Chen-Khovanov and Brundan-Stroppel. I will also explain what I mean by a "categorified" invariant and why low-dimensional topologists care about them. Parts of this talk describes joint work with D. Auroux and S. Wehrli, and other parts describe joint work with J. Baldwin.