Embeddings of Rational Homology Balls

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Tatyana Khodorovskiy , CUNY
Fine Hall 314

We will begin with a description of the rational homology balls appearing in Fintushel and Stern's rational blow-down procedure for smooth 4-manifolds, a generalization of the standard blow-down operation. We will then discuss various smooth and symplectic embedding results of these rational homology balls, as well as a description of a symplectic rational blow-up operation.  THIS IS A JOINT TOPOLOGY/ALGEBRAIC TOPOLOGY SEMINAR.  PLEASE NOTE DIFFERENT TIME AND LOCATION.