Events for 01/18/2017 from all calendars

Colloquium - Tian Yang

Time: 4:00PM - 5:00PM

Location: BLOC 220

Speaker: Tian Yang, Stanford University

Description:

Title: Mapping class group action on character varieties and the ergodicity

Abstract:
Character varieties of a surface are central objects in several beaches of math- ematics, such as low dimensional topology, algebraic geometry, differential geom- etry and mathematical physics. On the character varieties, there is a tautological action of the mapping class group - the group of symmetries of the surface, which is expected to be ergodic in certain cases. In this talk, I will review related results toward proving the ergodicity and introduce two long standing and related conjec- tures: Goldman’s Conjecture and Bowditch’s Conjecture. It is shown by Marche and Wolff that the two conjectures are equivalent for closed surfaces. For punc- tured surfaces, we disprove Bowditch’s Conjecture by giving counterexamples, yet prove that Goldman’s Conjecture is still true in this case.