Europe/Lisbon
Online

Sam Gunningham
Sam Gunningham, Montana State University

Skein theory and the geometric Langlands program

Skein modules are certain families of vector spaces spanned by embedded links or graphs in a 3-manifold M, modulo certain local relations. They can be thought of both as an obstruction to defining a polynomial invariant of knots in M and as an invariant of the 3-manifold M. In this talk, I will survey some history, recent results, and work in progress on skein modules, motivated by their role in the geometric Langlands program. I will discuss joint work with (some subsets of) David Ben-Zvi, David Jordan, Pavel Safronov, Monica Vazirani, and Haiping Yang.

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