Title: Bordism Invariants of the Mapping Class Group

Aaron Heap  (University of Rochester)

Tuesday, November 16 at 1:30pm in Malott 406

Abstract:

The mapping class group is the group of (isotopy classes of) orientation-preserving homeomorphisms of a surface. We will discuss some new 3-dimensional bordism invariants of certain subgroups of the mapping class group. In particular, these are invariants of the Johnson filtration of the mapping class group. We will discuss a new representation in terms of spin bordism which combines into a single homomorphism all of the information given by many of the well-known representations, including the Johnson homomorphism, Birman-Craggs homomorphism, and Morita homomorphism.