Speaker: Joan Licata (ANU) http://maths-people.anu.edu.au/~licataj/Site/Homepage.html Time: Thursday, May 2, 12NOON--1PM Room: Carslaw 707A Lunch: after the talk. The reservation at Law Annex Cafe is at 1:10PM. ---------------------------------------------- Title: Reeb Dynamics and Topological Decompositions Abstract: a contact form on a three-manifold determines a foliation by one-manifolds called Reeb orbits, and these are the building blocks for a family of contact invariants coming from symplectic field theory. Recent efforts to model these invariants topologically suggest the following question: given a decomposition of a three-manifold M into one-manifolds, is there a contact form on M whose Reeb orbits realize the decomposition? This talk will discuss related obstructions, necessary conditions, and open questions, as well as introducing the topological invariants which motivate the topic. ---------------------------------------------- Seminar website: http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/SemConf/Geometry/