10/12/2006

Jacob Rasmussen
Princeton University

HOMFLY Homology and skein theory

I'll discuss the structure of Khovanov and Rozansky's HOMFLY homology, with an emphasis on what we can (and can't) learn about the theory from skein exact sequences. An important ingredient is a "reduced" version of the HOMFLY homology for links. This theory behaves in a manner analogous to knot Floer homology.