Eric Kilgore, USC

Title: On the invariance of contact homology

Abstract: Contact homology and its enhancements (symplectic field theory) are powerful tools for studying contact manifolds via holomorphic curves in the symplectization. Despite great progress towards a rigorous construction, the current state of the art only obtains invariance on the homological level (rather than in the category of commutative dg algebras) and how to enhance this has remained poorly understood, standing as an obstacle both to the study of linearized contact homology, and more sophisticated invariants like rational SFT. In this talk I will discuss these objects, and current work in progress towards a resolution of the outstanding difficulties.