Category Archives: Groups

Hyperbolic Geometry Notes #5 – Mostow Rigidity

1. Mostow Rigidity For hyperbolic surfaces, Moduli space is quite large and complicated. However, in three dimensions Moduli space is trivial: Theorem 1 If is a homotopy equivalence of closed hyperbolic manifolds with , then is homotopic to an isometry. … Continue reading

Posted in 3-manifolds, Groups, Hyperbolic geometry, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Hyperbolic Geometry (157b) Notes #1

I am Alden, one of Danny’s students. Error/naivete that may (will) be found here is mine. In these posts, I will attempt to give notes from Danny’s class on hyperbolic geometry (157b). This first post covers some models for hyperbolic … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, Euclidean Geometry, Groups, Hyperbolic geometry, Lie groups, Overview, Visualization | 5 Comments

FH, T, FLp and all that

I am (update: was) currently (update: but am no longer) in Brisbane for the “New directions in geometric group theory” conference, which has been an entirely enjoyable and educational experience. I got to eat fish and chips, to watch Australia … Continue reading

Posted in Groups, Lie groups, Rigidity | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Polygonal words

Last Friday, Henry Wilton gave a talk at Caltech about his recent joint work with Sang-hyun Kim on polygonal words in free groups. Their work is motivated by the following well-known question of Gromov: Question(Gromov): Let be a one-ended word-hyperbolic group. … Continue reading

Posted in Groups, Surfaces | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Quasimorphisms from knot invariants

Last week, Michael Brandenbursky from the Technion gave a talk at Caltech on an interesting connection between knot theory and quasimorphisms. Michael’s paper on this subject may be obtained from the arXiv. Recall that given a group , a quasimorphism … Continue reading

Posted in 3-manifolds, Groups | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Harmonic measure

An amenable group acting by homeomorphisms on a compact topological space preserves a probability measure on ; in fact, one can given a definition of amenability in such terms. For example, if is finite, it preserves an atomic measure supported … Continue reading

Posted in Dynamics, Groups, Hyperbolic geometry, Surfaces | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Faces of the scl norm ball

I am in Melbourne at the moment, in the middle of giving a lecture series, as part of the 2009 Clay-Mahler lectures (also see here). Yesterday I gave a lecture with the title “faces of the scl norm ball”, and … Continue reading

Posted in Dynamics, Groups, Surfaces | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment