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 The Thurston norm
March 04, 2026 Yuyuan 27 lines
March 11, 2026 No talk (Conference)
March 18, 2026 Gheehyun Configuration spaces and finite type invariants [BT], [Th]
March 25, 2026 No talk (Conference)
April 01, 2026 Evan Lefschetz fibrations: greatest hits [Hu]
April 08, 2026 Jessica Rokhlin's theorem
April 15, 2026 Gheehyun Exotic closed 4-manifolds from Rokhlin's theorem
April 22, 2026 Supravat An introduction to algebraic surfaces




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

[BT] Raoul Bott, Clifford Taubes, On the self‐linking of knots

[Th] Dylan P. Thurston, Integral Expressions for the Vassiliev Knot Invariants

[BCSS] Ryan Budney, James Conant, Kevin P. Scannell, Dev Sinha, New perspectives on self-linking

[Hu] Evan Huang, Equivalent genus-2 factorizations of type (4, 3)





















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