Higher Ribbon Graphs

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David Nadler, University of California, Berkeley
IAS Room S-101

Ribbon graphs capture the topology of open Riemann surfaces in an elementary combinatorial form. One can hope this is the first step toward a general theory for open symplectic manifolds such as Stein manifolds. We will discuss progress toward such a higher dimensional theory (joint work with Alvarez-Gavela, Eliashberg, and Starkston), and in particular, what kind of topological spaces might generalize graphs. We will also discuss applications to the calculation of symplectic invariants.