Geometry and Topology Seminar: "Coloring invariants of knots and links are often intractable"

Abstract: I’ll give an overview of my result with Greg Kuperberg concerning the computational complexity of G-coloring invariants of knots, where G is a finite, simple group. We have a similar theorem for closed 3-manifolds. I’ll try to give a sense of the commonalities of the two proofs (e.g. “reversible computing with a combinatorial TQFT”), as well as where they differ (there’s some interesting algebraic topology that needed developing in the knot case).

Host: Michael Landry