Michigan Topology Intercity Symposium (MITIS)


The Michigan Topology Intercity Symposium (MITIS) is an annual meeting of topologists in Michigan.  

The 2024 symposium will be held on Saturday, November 9, 2024 at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. 


Speakers:

Sungkyung Kang (Oxford)

Rachel Roberts (Washington St. Louis) 

Dean Spyropoulos (Michigan State) 

Hugo Zhou (Michigan)


Organizers: Sally Collins, Matt Hedden, Matt Stoffregen, Linh Truong, and Hugo Zhou


Registration:   If you would like to attend, please register here by October 25, 2024. 


Location:   Talks will be held in East Hall room 1324 on the first floor of East Hall on the Psychology side (north side of East Hall). Refreshments will be available in the 3rd floor terrace on the Psychology side (north side) of East Hall. For information on where to find East Hall or where to park, see Practical. 


Schedule: 

9:30-10am Refreshments

10:00-10:50am Rachel Roberts

11:10-12:00pm Dean Spyropoulos

12:00-2:00pm Lunch Break

2:00-2:50pm Hugo Zhou

3:00-4:00pm Refreshments 

4:00-4:50pm Sungkyung Kang

5:30pm      Dinner at restaurant

Contact:  For questions, please email tlinh@umich.edu

Titles and Abstracts


Title: Exoticness of boundary Dehn twists on positive-definite fillings of Seifert homology spheres 

Abstract: Given a smooth 4-manifold W bounding a Seifert manifold Y, we can define the boundary Dehn twist of W along the Seifert action of Y, which are important examples of potentially exotic diffeomorphisms when W is simply-connected. In this talk, we will present a proof that if Y is a homology sphere, W is positive-definite, and b_1(W)=0, then the boundary Dehn twist is always infinite-order exotic. Interestingly, the most important piece of the proof is the Z/p-equivariant Seiberg-Witten Floer homology of Y for sufficiently large primes p. This is a joint work with JungHwan Park and Masaki Taniguchi.


Title: Taut foliations and the L-space Conjecture 

Abstract:  I will give a brief introduction to taut foliations in compact 3-manifolds and then describe a construction of taut foliations. This work is joint with Charles Delman.


Title: Jones-Wenzl projectors and odd Khovanov homology

Abstract: The Jones-Wenzl projectors are particular elements of the Temperley-Lieb algebras essential to the construction of quantum 3-manifold invariants. A highly utilized categorification of these projectors was given by Cooper and Krushkal in 2012. Recently, we have provided a new categorification which succeeds in being compatible with odd Khovanov homology—a variant of Khovanov's original theory defined initially by Ozsváth, Rasmussen, and Szabó. Among the consequences of this result is the construction of a new categorification of the colored Jones polynomial.


Title: L-Space Satellite Operators and Knot Floer Homology

Abstract: We consider satellite operations where the corresponding 2-component link is an L-space link. This family includes many commonly studied satellite operators, including cables, the Whitehead operator, and a family of Mazur operators. Using a bordered module reinterpretation of the link surgery formula by Zemke, we give a formula to compute the knot Floer complex of a satellite of K under L-space satellite operators, in terms of the knot complex of K. This is joint work with Daren Chen and Ian Zemke.