Heegaard Splittings and Trisections 101: A Crash Course in Manifold Decompositions in Dimensions Three and Four

Abstract: In this talk, I will discuss Heegaard splittings of 3-manifolds and trisections of 4-manifolds. These decompositions cut the manifold into 1-handlebodies of appropriate dimension whose common intersection is a closed, orientable surface. By studying these decompositions, we obtain lots of information about the manifolds that they determine. This talk is based in part on David Gay's "From Heegaard splittings to trisections; porting 3-dimensional ideas to dimension 4."

Mathematics

Audience: advanced learners

Graduate Online Seminar Series (GOSS)

Series comments: Meeting Password: MATHGOSS

Announcement mailing list: groups.google.com/g/goss2021

Website: dzackgarza.com/GOSS/2021/

Recordings: www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3xhHlOzFPM&list=PLkscP0p2V2U5J-Gc4foDjQxVD-4c0dVU4