Unlink detection and the Khovanov module

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Matt Hedden, Michigan State University
Fine Hall 314

Kronheimer and Mrowka recently showed that Khovanov homology detects the unknot. Their proof does not obviously extend to show that Khovanov homology detects unlinks of more than one component, and one could reasonably question whether it actually does (the Jones polynomial, for instance, does not detect unlinks with multiple components). In this talk, I'll discuss how to use a spectral sequence of Ozsvath and Szabo in conjunction with Kronheimer and Mrowka's result to settle the question (in the affirmative). This is joint work with Yi Ni.