Ribbon graphs capture the topology of open Riemann surfaces in an elementary combinatorial form. One can hope this is the first step toward a general theory for open symplectic manifolds such as Stein manifolds. We will discuss progress toward such a higher-dimensional theory (joint work with Alvarez-Gavela, Eliashberg, and Starkston), and in particular, what kind of topological spaces might generalize graphs. We will also discuss applications to the calculation of symplectic invariants.
This video is part of the Institute for Advanced Study‘s Symplectic geometry seminar.
