TSVP Talk: "Knots, Physics, Knotted Vortices and the Topology of Vortex Reconnection" by Louis H Kauffman

Title: Knots, Physics, Knotted Vortices and the Topology of Vortex Reconnection

Speaker:  Louis H Kauffman, University of Illinois at Chicago
 
Abstract: This talk discusses knotted vortices and how they often degenerate to unknots and
unlinks by reconnection processes. We define a reconnection number of knots and links
and show how four dimensional topology allows the computation of the
reconnection number. This allows us the see that in some cases of experiments and in
computer models of vortex knots, the experiments and  models do find the least number of reconnections
to undo the knot. In other cases the physical process is less efficient than the best mathematical
reconnection.  We will frame this discussion in the context of how the topology of knots and links in three dimensional space is Intimately related to physics ever since the remarkable suggestions of Lord Kelvin in the nineteenth century that atoms are vortices in the luminiferous aether. 
While the aether theory has disappeared, the relations of topology and knot theory with physics have grown more and more significant.

Profile: Louis Kauffman was born in Potsdam, New York on Feb. 3, 1945. He graduated from Norwood-Norfolk Central High School in 1962  as valedictorian. He received the degree of B.S. in Mathematics from MIT in 1966. Kauffman was awarded a PhD. in Mathematics by Princeton University in 1972.  He became Professor of Mathematics Emeritus at University of Illinois at Chicago in May of 2017.  < Full Profile>

Language: English

Target audience: General audience/everyone at OIST and beyond.
Freely accessible to all OIST members and guests without registration.

This talk will also be broadcast online via Zoom:
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Meeting ID: 997 9111 4057
Passcode: 502263

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