at the
American Institute of Mathematics, Pasadena, California
organized by
Efstratia Kalfagianni, Christine Ruey Shan Lee, Helen Wong, and Tian Yang
The solution to Thurston’s geometrization conjecture established that 3-manifolds decompose into geometric pieces and that hyperbolic geometry is ubiquitous in low dimensional topology. Since the 80’s, low dimensional topology has also been influenced by ideas from quantum physics, which led to subtle structures and invariants. These include the Jones knot polynomial and the Witten-Reshetikhin-Turaev Topological Quantum Field Theories. Understanding the interplay of these quantum invariants to geometric structures from Thurston’s picture is a major goal of low dimensional topology that has received attention in the recent years. Outstanding conjectures predict deep relations between quantum topology and hyperbolic geometry. For example, the volume conjectures assert that certain quantum invariants of hyperbolic 3-manifolds should determine the volume of the hyperbolic structure.
The workshop will bring together experts in quantum topology and in hyperbolic geometry to study the interplay between geometry and TQFT structure on 3-manifolds, with an eye towards developing tools to approach some of these conjectures.
The workshop will focus on the following promising directions:
The workshop schedule.
A report on the workshop activities.