GTA Seminar: Licata -- Reeb Dynamics and Topological Decompositions

Speaker: Joan Licata (ANU)

http://maths-people.anu.edu.au/~licataj/Site/Homepage.html

Time: Thursday, May 2, 12NOON--1PM

Room: Carslaw 707A

Lunch: after the talk. The reservation at Law Annex 
Cafe is at 1:10PM. 

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Title: Reeb Dynamics and Topological Decompositions

Abstract: a contact form on a three-manifold determines a 
foliation by one-manifolds called Reeb orbits, and these 
are the building blocks for a family of contact invariants 
coming from symplectic field theory.  Recent efforts to 
model these invariants topologically suggest the following 
question: given a decomposition of a three-manifold M into 
one-manifolds, is there a contact form on M whose Reeb 
orbits realize the decomposition? This talk will discuss 
related obstructions, necessary conditions, and open 
questions, as well as introducing the topological 
invariants which motivate the topic.

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Seminar website:

http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/SemConf/Geometry/