February 23, 2007

Lenny Ng (Duke / Princeton)

Title: Transverse knots and Heegaard Floer homology

Abstract: Transverse knots in standard contact R^3 are not as well understood as their Legendrian kin in contact geometry. I will discuss what is currently known about the classification of transverse knots, and present examples which are distinguished by the new invariant living in knot Floer homology due to Ozsvath-Szabo-Thurston. This is joint work with Peter Ozsvath and Dylan Thurston.