Geometry and Topology Seminar: Speaker: Sergei Lanzat (University of Haifa). Title: On the contact isotopy problem
Speaker: Dr. Sergei Lanzat (University of Haifa)
Title: On the contact isotopy problem
Date: Thursday, October 22, 2015
Place: Room 614 of the Science & Education Building, Univ. of Haifa
Time: 11:10
Abstract: The contact mapping class group of a contact manifold V is the set of contact isotopy classes of diffeomorphisms of V preserving the contact structure. In this talk I’ll show that for certain V the mapping class group contains an isomorphic copy of the full braid group on n strands. As a byproduct of the construction a result related to the contact isotopy problem is obtained, namely that there are contactomorphisms which are smoothly isotopic to the identity, but not so through contactomorphisms. In fact, the pure braid group embeds into the part of the contact mapping class group consisting of classes which are smoothly trivial. Joint work with Frol Zapolsky.
