4:00 pm Thursday, November 4, 2010
Colloquium : Characteristic polynomials and dilatations of pseudo-Anosov mapping classes
by Joan Birman (Columbia University) in HB 227
The mapping class group of a 2-manifold S, known as Mod(S), is the group of orientation-preserving diffeomorphisms of S, modulo those diffeomorphisms that are isotopic to the identity. We will review some of the developments that followed after William Thurston's discovery, in 1976, of a striking new way to think about elements in Mod(S). We will discuss recent work that relates to the "dilatation" of certain elements in Mod(S). It's a real number, and it's a conjugacy class invariant. Host Department: Rice University-Mathematics
Submitted by ep6@rice.edu |
