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Generalized Seifert surfaces and signatures of colored links

Geometry/Topology

Speaker: David Cimasoni, UC Berkeley
Location: 693 Kerr
Start time: Wed, Nov 2 2005, 4:10PM

The Seifert surface is a well-known and very useful tool in link theory. For instance, it permits to study the Alexander invariants, the Conway polynomial, and the signature of an oriented link. In this talk, I shall introduce generalized Seifert surfaces for colored links. They provide a geometric interpretation of the multivariable Alexander invariants and of the Conway function. They also make it possible to define and compute easily a multivariable signature that generalizes the Levine-Tristram signature.