Seminar series
Date
Wed, 25 Oct 2023
Time
16:00 -
17:00
Location
L6
Speaker
Soheil Azarpendar
Organisation
University of Oxford
An old and challenging conjecture proposed by R.H. Fox in 1962 states that the absolute values of the coefficients of the Alexander polynomial of an alternating knot are trapezoidal i.e. strictly increase, possibly plateau, then strictly decrease. We give a survey of the known results and use them to motivate the study of branched double covers. The second part of the talk focuses on the properties of the branched double covers of alternating knots.