Professor Bridson will deliver a total of seven lectures on the state of contemporary Geometric Group Theory. Topics will include: limit groups, free group automorphisms, free by cyclic groups, dimension for groups (cohomolgical, topological, CAT(0), action etc.) CAT(0) spaces, the geometry of word problem, balanced presentations and the Andrews-Curtis Conjecture, Grothendieck ambiguity, Deficiency, and the conjugacy and isomorphism problems.
The University of Arkansas Spring Lecture Series, held each year since 1977, features multiple talks by a leading researcher outlining the state of an area of mathematics. This year's conference presents an excellent opportunity for graduate students and young researchers to gain an overview of Geometric Group Theory. Geometric Group Theory aims to study groups, algebraic objects in nature, using geometric techniques. In the past 25 years geometric structures were found on many groups that are of great interest for researchers in many fields of natural sciences. Theses structures lead to the discovery of fast algorithms for several key problems in group theory. More information can be found on the conference homepage: www.uark.edu/depts/mathinfo/sls-2006/
