New algebraic invariants of Legendrian links

Series
Geometry Topology Seminar
Time
Monday, February 12, 2024 - 2:00pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Lenhard Ng – Duke
Organizer
John Etnyre

For the past 25 years, a key player in contact topology has been the Floer-theoretic invariant called Legendrian contact homology. I'll discuss a package of new invariants for Legendrian knots and links that builds on Legendrian contact homology and is derived from rational symplectic field theory. This includes a Poisson bracket on Legendrian contact homology and a symplectic structure on augmentation varieties. Time permitting, I'll also describe an unexpected connection to cluster theory for a family of Legendrian links associated to positive braids. Parts of this are joint work in progress with Roger Casals, Honghao Gao, Linhui Shen, and Daping Weng.