Back to Departmental Colloquium: Spring 2025
Departmental Colloquium
Date: Thursday, Feb 27, 2025
Time: 4:00PM - 5:00PM
Location: JWB 335
Amie Wilkinson
University of Chicago
Title |
Dynamical Symmetry |
Abstract |
The centralizer $Z(f)$ of a diffeomorphism $f: M \to M$ of a closed manifold $M$ is the group of all diffeomorphisms commuting with $f$; it is the collection of dynamical symmetries of $f$. The centralizer of $f$ always contains the group $\langle f \rangle$ generated by $f$ as a normal subgroup, and conjecturally the two typically coincide (that is, ``the generic diffeomorphism has only trivial symmetries’’). In this talk, I will describe some results and conjectures in a project with Danijela Damjanovic, Chengyang Wu and Disheng Xu that addresses the question: what happens when $Z(f)$ is bigger than $\langle f \rangle$? |
Geometry and Topology
Distinguished Lecture Series