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Seminar

Skein Lasagna Modules and Categorified Projectors

Speaker
Melissa Zhang (UC Davis)
Date
Tue, Oct 8 2024, 4:00pm
Location
383N
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Morrison, Walker, and Wedrich’s skein lasagna modules are 4-manifold invariants defined using Khovanov-Rozansky homology similarly to how skein modules for 3-manifolds are defined. In 2020, Manolescu and Neithalath developed a formula for computing this invariant for 2-handlebodies by defining an isomorphic object called cabled Khovanov-Rozansky homology; this is computed as a colimit of cables of the attaching link in the Kirby diagram of the 4-manifold. In joint work with Ian Sullivan, we lift the Manolescu-Neithalath construction to the level of Bar-Natan's tangles and cobordisms, and trade colimits of vector spaces for a homotopy colimit in Bar-Natan's category. As an application, we give a proof that the skein lasagna module of $S^2 \times S^2$ is trivial, confirming a conjecture of Manolescu. Our local techniques also allow for computations of the skein lasagna invariant for other 4-manifolds whose Kirby diagram contains a 0-framed unknot component. Our methods also allow us to relate the Rozansky-Willis invariant of links in $S^1 \times S^2$ to skein lasagna modules.