Back to Departmental Colloquium: Fall 2000
Departmental Colloquium
Date: Tuesday, Dec 12, 2000
Time: 4:15PM
Location: JWB 335
Panos Papasoglu
Paris-Sud
Title |
Asymptotic topology and group splittings |
Abstract |
Gromov’s recent work on hyperbolic groups showed that one can study finitely generated groups via the ’large scale geometry’ of their Cayley graphs. The appropriate geometric notion in this context is that of a quasi-isometry rather than isometry. In my talk I will focus on the decomposition theory of groups. It turns out that the ‘asymptotic topology’ of the Cayley graph determines in many cases whether a group admits a splitting as an amalgamated product or HNN-extension. In the case of splittings over infinite cyclic groups the proof of this fact is based on a new topological characterization of the plane. |
Combinatorics
Topology
Geometry and Topology