Spring 2026 Top Secret Student Topology Party Schedule

Hi! This is the top secret student topology party webpage. Please share this webpage with anyone who might be interested! Here's last term's webpage.

We meet on Wednesdays 3:00-5:00 in Fine Hall 601.

This term, Evan is co-organizing this topology party.

Date Speaker Topic References
February 11, 2026 Fiona The cosmetic surgery conjecture and finite type invariants [Br], [BN1], [BN2]
February 18, 2026 Evan An exotic loop of diffeomorphisms of S4 [Wa1], [KL, Lectures 1, 2, and 4]
February 25, 2026 Meenakshi TBD
March 04, 2026 Yuyuan 27 lines
March 11, 2026 No talk (Conference)
March 18, 2026 Gheehyun Definition and invariance of Watanabe's invariant [Wa1], [KL, Lecture 3]




References

[Wa1] Tadayuki Watanabe, Exotic elements of the rational homotopy groups of Diff(S2n)

[KL] Danica Kosanović, Jianfeng Lin, Kontsevich invariants from configuration spaces (Lectures 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5)

[Le] Christine Lescop, Knot Invariants and Configuration Space Integrals

[LX] Jianfeng Lin, Yi Xie, Configuration space integrals and formal smooth structures

[Wa2] Tadayuki Watanabe, Some exotic nontrivial elements of the rational homotopy groups of Diff(S4)

[Wa3] Tadayuki Watanabe, Addendum to: Some exotic nontrivial elements of the rational homotopy groups of Diff(S4) (homological interpretation)

[Br] F. M. Brady, Using the Jones Polynomial to Prove Infinite Families of Knots Satisfy the Cosmetic Surgery Conjecture

[BN1] Dror Bar-Natan, On the Vassiliev knot invariants

[BN2] Dror Bar-Natan, The Fundamental Theorem of Vassiliev Invariants





















Back to main