11/19/2009

John Baldwin
Princeton University

Comultiplication in link Floer homology and transversely non-simple links.

By theorems of Bennequin, Wrinkle and Orevkov-Shevchishin, transverse links in the unique tight contact structure on R3 may thought of as closed braids. For a word h in the braid group on n strands, let us denote by T_h the corresponding transverse link. In this talk, I'll describe a relationship, for two braid words h and g, between the transverse link invariants in Floer homology associated to T_g and T_h with the invariant associated to T_hg. And I'll describe how this relationship can be used to produce a plethora of new prime transversely non-simple link types.