Tristan Wells, Michigan State University, will present a colloquium titled “On Rasmussen's Conjecture and Categorified Knot Invariants” as part of the Mathematics Department Colloquium Lecture series.

The abstract for the lecture is: In this talk, we define categorifications of two popular knot invariants, Khovanov homology and knot Floer homology. Jacob Rasmussen famously conjectured that the rank of the former is larger than the rank of the latter. This longstanding conjecture was finally resolved by Nathan Dowlin. We explore theses constructions and highlight their differences and similarities as evidence for this conjecture, then briefly outline Dowlin's approach.

The Math Department is a part of K-State’s College of Arts and Sciences.  To learn more about opportunities in Math at K-State, visit the math department website.