Algebraic and geometric aspects of Braid Groups

Series
Geometry Topology Student Seminar
Time
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 - 2:05pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Marta Aguilera – Georgia Tech
Organizer
Meredith Casey
In this talk I define the braid groups, its Garside structure, and its application to solve the word and conjugacy problems. I present a braid group with $n$ strands as the mapping class group of the disk with $n$ punctures, $\mathbb{D}^2-\{p_1\ldots p_n\}$, and a classification of surface homeomorphisms by the Nielsen Thurston theorem. I will also discuss results that require algebraic and geometric tools.