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SUMMARY:Character varieties of surfaces and Kauffman brackets - Francis Bo
 nahon\, USC
DTSTART:20110504T150000Z
DTEND:20110504T160000Z
UID:TALK30170@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Ivan Smith
DESCRIPTION:My talk will involve two concepts which are apparently very di
 fferent. The character variety of a surface S\, consisting of homomorphism
 s from the fundamental group of S to a Lie group G\, arises in many differ
 ent branches of mathematics. The classical Kauffman bracket is an invarian
 t of knots and links in space\, closely related to the Jones polynomial. W
 hen G = SL_2 C\, Turaev showed that the character variety can be quantised
  by a generalisation of Kauffman brackets to the surface S. I will discuss
  the classification problem for Kauffman brackets on S\, with results\, co
 njectures and interesting examples. \n
LOCATION:MR13
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