Author Archives: Danny Calegari

Surface subgroups of Sapir’s group

Let be the free group on two generators, and let be the endomorphism defined on generators by and . We define Sapir’s group  to be the ascending HNN extension This group was studied by Crisp-Sageev-Sapir in the context of their … Continue reading

Posted in Ergodic Theory, Groups, Surfaces | Tagged , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Upper curvature bounds and CAT(K)

I am currently teaching a class at the University of Chicago on hyperbolic groups, and I have just introduced the concept of -hyperbolic (geodesic) metric spaces. A geodesic metrix space is -hyperbolic if for any geodesic triangle , and any … Continue reading

Posted in Hyperbolic geometry, Surfaces | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Bill Thurston 1946-2012

This morning I heard the awful news that Bill Thurston died last night. Many of us knew that Bill was very ill, but we all hoped (or imagined?) that he would still be with us for a while yet, and … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 12 Comments

Circle packing – theory and practice

I am spending a few months in Göttingen as a Courant Distinguished Visiting Professor, and talking a bit to Laurent Bartholdi about rational functions — i.e. holomorphic maps from the Riemann sphere to itself. A rational function is determined (up … Continue reading

Posted in Complex analysis, Visualization | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Agol’s Virtual Haken Theorem (part 3): return of the hierarchies

Ian gave his second and third talks this afternoon, completing his (quite detailed) sketch of the proof of the Virtual Haken Theorem. Recall that after work of Kahn-Markovic, Wise, Haglund-Wise and Bergeron-Wise, the proof reduces to showing the following: Theorem … Continue reading

Posted in 3-manifolds, Ergodic Theory, Groups, Hyperbolic geometry | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

Agol’s Virtual Haken Theorem (part 2): Agol-Groves-Manning strike back

Today Jason Manning gave a talk on a vital ingredient in the proof of Agol’s theorem, which is a result in geometric group theory. The theorem is a joint project of Agol-Groves-Manning, and generalizes some earlier work they did a … Continue reading

Posted in Groups | Tagged , , , , , , | 15 Comments

Agol’s Virtual Haken Theorem (part 1)

I am in Paris attending a workshop at the IHP where Ian Agol has just given the first of three talks outlining his proof of the Virtual Haken Conjecture and Virtual Fibration Conjecture in 3-manifold topology (hat tip to Henry … Continue reading

Posted in 3-manifolds, Groups, Hyperbolic geometry, Surfaces | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments