The Geometry of Hyperbolic Groups

event Thursday, February 20, 2020
access_time 3:00pm (CST)
room PHSC 1105
free_breakfast Tea at 2:30pm (CST) in PHSC 424
info Please note the unusual time of the colloquium. This is to avoid conflict with the public lecture at the Sam Noble Museum. We will still have tea and cookies before the talk in the lounge.

Abstract: Hyperbolic manifolds play an important role in geometry and topology, and in the 1980s Gromov introduced a notion of large-scale negative curvature that is strong enough to capture many salient features of these manifolds, yet broad enough to apply in a more coarse setting. In this talk, I will discuss groups that have negative curvature in the sense of Gromov. Viewing finitely generated groups as geometric objects offers a powerful perspective because groups that have a similar large-scale geometry often share common algebraic structure. I will present examples that arise naturally in low-dimensional topology, including surface amalgams and free-by-cyclic groups, which includes joint work with Yael Algom-Kfir, Mladen Bestvina, Arnaud Hilion, and Daniel Woodhouse.


For more information on this event, please contact Jing Tao.