Sl(N) link homology using foams and the Kapustin-Li formula

We use foams to give a topological construction of a rational link homology categorifying the slN link invariant, for N>3. To evaluate closed foams we use the Kapustin-Li formula adapted to foams by Khovanov and Rozansky. We show that for any link our homology is isomorphic to Khovanov and Rozansky's.Comment: The Kapustin-Li formula has been corrected for facets with non-zero genus and its normalization and some signs have been changed accordingly. 43 pages, lots of figure

Transitive factorizations of permutations and geometry

We give an account of our work on transitive factorizations of permutations. The work has had impact upon other areas of mathematics such as the enumeration of graph embeddings, random matrices, branched covers, and the moduli spaces of curves. Aspects of these seemingly unrelated areas are seen to be related in a unifying view from the perspective of algebraic combinatorics. At several points this work has intertwined with Richard Stanley's in significant ways.Comment: 12 pages, dedicated to Richard Stanley on the occasion of his 70th birthda

Triangulated surfaces in triangulated categories

For a triangulated category A with a 2-periodic dg-enhancement and a triangulated oriented marked surface S we introduce a dg-category F(S,A) parametrizing systems of exact triangles in A labelled by triangles of S. Our main result is that F(S,A) is independent on the choice of a triangulation of S up to essentially unique Morita equivalence. In particular, it admits a canonical action of the mapping class group. The proof is based on general properties of cyclic 2-Segal spaces. In the simplest case, where A is the category of 2-periodic complexes of vector spaces, F(S,A) turns out to be a purely topological model for the Fukaya category of the surface S. Therefore, our construction can be seen as implementing a 2-dimensional instance of Kontsevich's program on localizing the Fukaya category along a singular Lagrangian spine.Comment: 55 pages, v2: references added and typos corrected, v3: expanded version, comments welcom