Graduate Geometry, Topology and Dynamics Seminar
Brad Groff
UIC
Modern Group Splittings
Abstract: I'll talk about a subset of the following things:
1) Why van Kampen's theorem is so much more than you think (at least philosophically)
2) Splittings of surface groups and the change of basis principle
3) What is a JSJ decomposition of groups and how it differs from a JSJ decomposition of a 3-manifold
4) How we find splittings
5) Some splittings we don't expect to find using some of the approaches of (4)
There will be no formal proofs and everything I saw will likely be so smoothed over as to be misleading. Attend at your own peril.
Wednesday April 3, 2013 at 4:00 PM in SEO 612