On 22 April 2022 I gave a (virtual) talk at the 49.75’th (!) Knots in Washington conference, an international conference on knot theory held regularly since 1995.
Title: A symplectic basis for 3-manifold triangulations
Abstract: Neumann and Zagier in the 1980s introduced a symplectic vector space associated to an ideal triangulation of a cusped 3-manifold, such as a knot complement. We will discuss an interpretation for this symplectic structure in terms of the topology of the 3-manifold. This joint work with Jessica Purcell involves train tracks, Heegaard splittings, and is related to Ptolemy varieties, geometric quantisation, and the A-polynomial.
Slides from the talk are below.
washington_talkTalk at Knots in Washington 49.75