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Back to Departmental Colloquium: Fall 2021

Departmental Colloquium


Date: Thursday, Oct 21, 2021

Time: 4:00PM

Location: JWB 335


Alan Reid

Rice University

Title

The geometry, topology and arithmetic of Bianchi orbifolds and their finite covers

Abstract

Let d be a square-free positive integer, and let O d denote the ring of integers in Q (sqrt(− d) ). Then the groups PSL (2, O d ) are known as the Bianchi groups, and are a natural generalization of the modular group PSL (2, Z ). The Bianchi groups are discrete subgroups of PSL (2, C ), and as such act discontinuously on H 3. The quotient Bianchi orbifolds, Q d = H 3 / PSL (2, O d ) are non-compact finite volume hyperbolic 3-orbifolds with h d (class number of O d ) cusps. These represent the totality of commensurability classes of non-compact arithmetic hyperbolic 3 -orbifolds. This talk will survey some recent and not so recent work on understanding the geometry and topology of these orbifolds, their covers and connections to number theory.

Number Theory Commutative Algebra Topology

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