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Surfaces and iterated Bing doubles
Geometry/Topology| Speaker: | Cornelia Van Cott, University of San Francisco |
| Location: | 2112 MSB |
| Start time: | Tue, Oct 18 2011, 3:10PM |
Beginning with any knot K, one can construct a sequence of links called iterated Bing doubles of K. Because of connections to 4-dimensional surgery theory, research has focused on studying the surfaces which iterated Bing doubles bound. In this talk, we will start by constructing minimal genus surfaces in the three-sphere for iterated Bing doubles. We will then broaden our perspective and consider surfaces in the four-ball. In particular, we will discuss the problem of knowing when an iterated Bing double is slice (that is, knowing when the components of the link bound disjoint disks in the four-ball).