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Geometry-Topology Seminar

Thursday, March 22, 2007 - 4:30pm

Joan Licata

Yale University

Location

University of Pennsylvania

DRL 4C8

The Thurston norm is a measure of the combinatorial complexity of embedded surfaces representing second homology classes in a link complement. We will present results based on Heegaard Floer theory which determine the Thurston norms of members of a four-parameter family of pretzel links. We will also discuss two theorems descrbing how local changes in a link affect its Thurston norm and use these to extend the pretzel results to a broader class of links.