Date: Friday 14 October 2011, 4:30pm
Location: Hempfield High School, Room 213
 Speaker: Paul Melvin, Bryn Mawr College
   Title: Degree formulas for higher order linking

Abstract.  The linking number of a pair of closed curves in
3-space can be expressed as the degree of a map from the 2-torus to the
2-sphere, by means of the linking integral Gauss wrote down in 1833.  In
the early 1950's, John Milnor introduced a family of higher order
linking numbers - the mu bar invariants.  In this talk I will describe a
formula for Milnor's triple linking number as the "degree" of a map from
the 3-torus to the 2-sphere.  This is joint work with DeTurck, Gluck,
Komendarczyk, Shonkwiler and Vela-Vick.