KR Homology (1/14/07)

I gave this talk on Khovanov-Rozansky homology, a generalization of the HOMFLY and SL(N) polynomial invariants of knots, as part of the Winter School on Knot Theory and Representations at UT in January 2007. When I first looked at the paper that Alex and Carl had assigned me, I was very, very afraid. Then I wrote Scott (one of the plenary speakers), and he told me to look at one of Rasmussen's recent papers, "Some differentials on Khovanov-Rozansky homology", which was a bit easier to read. Indeed, this is what I based the talk on. You can read Alex's notes from my talk (with a bit of commentary by Scott at the end).