Kleinian surface groups and filling links

Seminar: 
Geometry & Topology
Event time: 
Tuesday, April 19, 2022 - 4:15pm
Speaker: 
William Stagner
Speaker affiliation: 
Rice University
Event description: 

Freedman and Krushkal recently defined the notion of a filling link in 3-manifolds: a link L is filling in M if for any 1-spine G of M which is disjoint from L, pi_1(G) injects into pi_1(M - L). It turns out that proving the existence of filling links is very subtle, even for concrete examples. In this talk we will investigate an intimate relationship between filling links and Kleinian surface groups. We will leverage this connection to prove the existence of filling links in 3-manifolds of small Heegaard genus, using ideas from minimal surfaces, arithmetic groups, and the Hilden-Lozano-Montesinos theory of universal links.

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