An Equivalence Between Combinatorial Tangle Floer And Contact Categories

We prove an equivalence between the category underlying combinatorial tangle Floer homology and the contact category by building on the prior work of Lipshitz, Ozsváth, and Thurston and later Zhan. In his 2015 paper "Formal Contact Categories", Cooper establishes a relationship between the categories associated to oriented surfaces by Heegaard Floer theory and embedded contact theory. In this thesis, we examine a special case of his general argument to show an equivalence between the categories discussed by Petkova and Vértesi and those discussed by Tian. To do this, we construct two bimodules associated to the transformations between the underlying structure of combinatorial tangle Floer homology and the contact category. We take the tensor product of these bimodules and show that the product is equivalent to the identity, inducing an isomorphism between the categories of interest.

The aim of this work is to take the combinatorial construction put forward by Petkova and Vértesi for tangle Floer homology and show that many of the arguments that apply to grid diagrams for knots can be applied to grid diagrams for tangles. In particular, we showed that the stabilization and commutation arguments used in combinatorial knot Floer homology can be applied mutatis mutandis to combinatorial tangle Floer homology, giving us an equivalence of chain complexes (either exactly in the case of commutations or up to the size of the grid in stabilizations). We then added a new move, the stretch move, and showed that the same arguments which work for commutations work for this move as well. We then extended these arguments to the context of A-infinity structures. We developed for our stabilization arguments a new type of algebraic notation and used this notation to demonstrate and simplify useful algebraic results. These results were then applied to produce type D and type DA equivalences between grid complexes and their stabilized counterparts. For commutation moves we proceeded more directly, constructing the needed type D homomorphisms and homotopies as needed and then showing that these give us a type D equivalence between tangle grid diagrams and their commuted counterparts. We also showed that these arguments can also be applied to our new stretch move. Finally, we showed that these grid moves are sufficient to accomplish the planar tangle moves required to establish equivalence of the tangles themselves with the exception of one move.

The authors construct Heegaard Floer theory for 3-manifolds with connected boundary. The theory associates to an oriented, parametrized two-manifold a differential graded algebra. For a three-manifold with parametrized boundary, the invariant comes in two different versions, one of which (type D) is a module over the algebra and the other of which (type A) is an A∞ module. Both are well-defined up to chain homotopy equivalence. For a decomposition of a 3-manifold into two pieces, the A∞ tensor product of the type D module of one piece and the type A module from the other piece is ^HF of the glued manifold. As a special case of the construction, the authors specialize to the case of three-manifolds with torus boundary. This case can be used to give another proof of the surgery exact triangle for ^HF. The authors relate the bordered Floer homology of a three-manifold with torus boundary with the knot Floer homology of a filling.

Knot theory is a classical area of low-dimensional topology, directly connected with the theory of three-manifolds and smooth four-manifold topology. In recent years, the subject has undergone transformative changes thanks to its connections with a number of other mathematical disciplines, including gauge theory; representation theory and categorification; contact geometry; and the theory of pseudo-holomorphic curves. Starting from the combinatorial point of view on knots using their grid diagrams, this book serves as an introduction to knot theory, specifically as it relates to some of the above developments. After a brief overview of the background material in the subject, the book gives a self-contained treatment of knot Floer homology from the point of view of grid diagrams. Applications include computations of the unknotting number and slice genus of torus knots (asked first in the 1960s and settled in the 1990s), and tools to study variants of knot theory in the presence of a contact structure. Additional topics are presented to prepare readers for further study in holomorphic methods in low-dimensional topology, especially Heegaard Floer homology. The book could serve as a textbook for an advanced undergraduate or part of a graduate course in knot theory. Standard background material is sketched in the text and the appendices.

Gregory Bateson was a philosopher, anthropologist, photographer, naturalist, and poet, as well as the husband and collaborator of Margaret Mead. This classic anthology of his major work includes a new Foreword by his daughter, Mary Katherine Bateson. 5 line drawings.

More recently, Khovanov introduced link homology as a generalization of the Jones polynomial to homology of chain complexes and Ozsvath and Szabo developed Heegaard-Floer homology, that lifts the Alexander polynomial. These two significantly different theories are closely related and the dependencies are the object of intensive study. These ideas mark the beginning of a new era in knot theory that includes relationships with four-dimensional problems and the creation of new forms of algebraic topology relevant to knot theory. The theory of skein modules is an older development also having its roots in Jones discovery. Another significant and related development is the theory of virtual knots originated independently by Kauffman and by Goussarov Polyak and Viro in the '90s. All these topics and their relationships are the subject of the survey papers in this book.

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. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.

Combining concepts from topology and algorithms, this book delivers what its title promises: an introduction to the field of computational topology. Starting with motivating problems in both mathematics and computer science and building up from classic topics in geometric and algebraic topology, the third part of the text advances to persistent homology. This point of view is critically important in turning a mostly theoretical field of mathematics into one that is relevant to a multitude of disciplines in the sciences and engineering. The main approach is the discovery of topology through algorithms. The book is ideal for teaching a graduate or advanced undergraduate course in computational topology, as it develops all the background of both the mathematical and algorithmic aspects of the subject from first principles. Thus the text could serve equally well in a course taught in a mathematics department or computer science department.

Bordered Floer homology assigns invariants to 3-manifolds with boundary, such that the Heegaard Floer homology of a closed 3-manifold, split into two pieces, can be recovered as a tensor product of the bordered invariants of the pieces. The authors construct cornered Floer homology invariants of 3-manifolds with codimension-2 corners and prove that the bordered Floer homology of a 3-manifold with boundary, split into two pieces with corners, can be recovered as a tensor product of the cornered invariants of the pieces.