Algebra and Combinatorics Seminar

Date: March 27, 2015

Time: 3:00PM - 3:50PM

Location: BLOC 628

Speaker: Sherilyn Tamagawa, UC Santa Barbara

Title: Quandles of Virtual Knots

Abstract: We will explore algebraic invariants on a special class of knots, known as virtual knots. Our main focus will be on quandles, an algebraic structure which serves as a perfect knot invariant, but is usually impossible to compute. We construct new invariants by taking quotients of quandles, and introduce a variation on the Alexander polynomial.