Seminar

Zoom Link

A surface bundle is determined up to isomorphism by its monodromy.  For surface bundles over the circle, the monodromy is determined by a single mapping class, and Thurston's hyperbolization theorem precisely connects the geometry/topology of the monodromy with that of the bundle.  This served as inspiration for work of Farb and Mosher to begin developing a general theory for arbitrary surface bundles.  The story has been evolving for 25+ years and makes numerous connections to various flavors of hyperbolic geometry.  This talk will be a (biased) survey describing several open questions, and past and present joint projects with several people, primarily Autumn Kent, as well as Mladen Bestvina, Ken Bromberg, Spencer Dowdall, Matt Durham, Alex Sisto, Jacob Russell, and several others.