Diffeomorphisms of reducible 3-manifolds
Speaker:
Rachael Boyd, University of Glasgow
Date and Time:
Monday, July 28, 2025 - 10:40am to 11:30am
Location:
Fields Institute, Room 230
Abstract:
I will talk about joint work with Corey Bregman and Jan Steinebrunner, in which we study the moduli space B Diff(M), for M a compact, connected, reducible 3-manifold. We prove that when M is orientable and has non-empty boundary, B Diff(M rel ∂M) has the homotopy type of a finite CW-complex. This was conjectured by Kontsevich and previously proved in the case where M is irreducible by Hatcher and McCullough. The theory we develop to prove this theorem has other applications, and I’ll provide an overview of these.