Joan Licata
Yale University
Local link alterations and the Thurston norm
Abstract: The Thurston norm measures the combinatorial complexity of surfaces representing second homology classes in a link complement. In this talk we discuss the use of the Heegaard Floer link invariant in computing the Thurston norm. We will begin with an infinite family of pretzel links and then present two theorems which address the question of how local changes to a link affect the Thurston norm of its complement.