Date/Time: 1 March 2024, 4:30pm ET
 Location: Lebanon Valley College, Lynch Hall Room 182 and on Zoom
  Speaker: Siddhi Krishna, Columbia University
    Title: Unknot detection through the ages

 Abstract:Knot theory is a rich subject which ties together
many areas, including topology, geometry, representation theory, and
others. Knot invariants assign some auxiliary object (e.g. a surface,
3-manifold, 4-manifold, polynomial, vector space, group, etc) to a knot,
such that the auxiliary object is independent of how the knot is
presented. The simplest knot is called the unknot, and a foundational
question within low-dimensional topology is "which knot invariants
detect the unknot?" In this talk, I'll survey various answers to this
question over the past 60 years, ranging from the algebraic, to the
topological, to the computational. I will not assume any background in
low-dimensional topology for this talk -- all are welcome!