March 30, 2017
Mathematics Colloquium Lecture March 30
David Nadler, University of California, Berkeley, will present "Higher Ribbon Graphs" as part of the Mathematics Department Colloquium Lecture series at 2:30 p.m. Thursday, March 30, in 102 Cardwell Hall.
Abstract: Ribbon graphs capture the topology of open Riemann surfaces in an elementary combinatorial form. One can hope this is the first step toward a general theory for open symplectic manifolds such as Stein manifolds. We will discuss a proposal for such a higher-dimensional theory, and in particular, what kind of topological spaces might generalize graphs. Time permitting, we also will discuss applications, including to the calculation of symplectic invariants.