# Groups & Dynamics

The Groups & Dynamics seminar meets on Thursdays at 10:30 in the Ross building room 70.
2019 Mar 14

# Manuel Luethi (ETH) : Effective equidistribution of primitive rational points along long horocycle orbits and disjointness to Kloosterman sums

10:00am to 11:30am

## Location:

Ross 70
Abstract: An observation by Jens Marklof shows that the primitive rational points of a fixed denominator along the periodic unipotent orbit of volume equal to the square of the denominator equidistribute inside a proper submanifold of the modular surface. This concentration as well as the equidistribution are intimately related to classical questions of number theoretic origin. We discuss the distribution of the primitive rational points along periodic orbits of intermediate size. In this case, we can show joint equidistribution with polynomial rate in the modular surface and in the torus.
2019 Feb 07

# Special group actions seminar. On Tame Subgroups of Finitely Presented Groups: Prof. Rita Gitik, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

10:00am to 11:00am

## Location:

Ross 70
We describe several examples of tame subgroups of finitely presented groups and prove that the fundamental groups of certain finite graphs of groups are locally tame.
2018 May 31

# Groups & Dynamics: Anish Gosh (TIFR) - The metric theory of dense lattice orbits

10:30am to 11:30am

Abstract: The classical theory of metric Diophantine approximation is very well developed and has, in recent years, seen significant advances, partly due to connections with homogeneous dynamics. Several problems in this subject can be viewed as particular examples of a very general setup, that of lattice actions on homogeneous varieties of semisimple groups. The latter setup presents significant challenges, including but not limited to, the non-abelian nature of the objects under study.
2018 Jun 14

# Groups & Dynamics seminar. Mark Sapir (Vanderbilt): S-machines and their applications

10:30am to 12:00pm

## Location:

Ross 70
Title: S-machines and their applications Abstract: I will discuss applications of S-machines which were first introduced in 1996. The applications include * Description of possible Dehn functions of groups * Various Higman-like embedding theorems * Finitely presented non-amenable torsion-by-cyclic groups * Aspherical manifolds containing expanders * Groups with quadratic Dehn functions and undecidable conjugacy problem
2018 Jun 07

# Groups & Dynamics seminar Arie Levit (Yale): Critical exponents of invariant random subgroups in negative curvature

10:30am to 12:00pm

Title : "Critical exponents of invariant random subgroups in negative curvature"
2018 Jan 25

# Special seminar: Sylvian Cappell (NYU) "What can be the fixed point sets of a given finite group acting on a non-simply-connected compact space?"

10:30am to 11:30am

## Location:

Ross 70
We will report on a joint work with Shmuel Weinberger of U. of Chicago & Min Yan of Hong Kong U. of Sci. & Tech.
2017 Mar 02

# Group actions seminar: David El-Chai Ben Ezra (HUJI) - The congruence subgroup problem for automorphism groups of  free meta-abelian groups

10:30am to 11:30am

2017 Nov 02

# Group actions: Remi Coulon (Rennes) - Growth gap in hyperbolic groups and amenability

10:30am to 11:30am

## Location:

hyperbolic groups and amenability
(joint work with Françoise Dal'Bo and Andrea Sambusetti) Given a finitely generated group G acting properly on a metric space X, the exponential growth rate of G with respect to X measures "how big" the orbits of G are. If H is a subgroup of G, its exponential growth rate is bounded above by the one of G. In this work we are interested in the following question: what can we say if H and G have the same exponential growth rate? This problem has both a combinatorial and a geometric origin. For the combinatorial part, Grigorchuck and Cohen
2017 Apr 27

# Group actions: Yair Glasner (BGU) - On Highly transitive permutation representations of groups.

10:30am to 11:30am

## Location:

Ross 70
Abstract: A permutation representation of a group G is called highly transitive if it is transitive on k-tuples of points for every k. Until just a few years ago groups admitting such permutation representations were thought of as rare. I will focus on three rather recent papers: G-Garion, Hall-Osin, Gelander-G-Meiri (in preparation) showing that such groups are in fact very common.
2018 May 10

# Groups & dynamics: Sanghoon Kwon (Kwandong University) - A combinatorial approach to the Littlewood conjecture in positive characteristic

10:30am to 11:30am

## Location:

Ross 70
The Littlewood conjecture is an open problem in simultaneous Diophantine approximation of two real numbers. Similar problem in a field K of formal series over finite fields is also still open. This positive characteristic version of problem is equivalent to whether there is a certain bounded orbit of diagonal semigroup action on Bruhat-Tits building of PGL(3,K).
2017 Jan 05

# Groups and dynamics: Masaki Tsukamoto (lecture 5)

10:30am to 11:30am

Ross 70
2017 Jan 19

# Groups and dynamics: Manfred Einsiedler (ETH) - Measure Rigidy and Quantitative Recurrence

10:30am to 11:30am

Ross 70
2015 Dec 17

# Groups & dynamics: Robert Hough (IAS) - Mixing and cut-off on cyclic groups

12:00pm to 1:00pm

## Location:

Einstein 110
Consider a sequence of random walks on $\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$ with symmetric generating sets $A= A(p)$. I will describe known and new results regarding the mixing time and cut-off. For instance, if the sequence $|A(p)|$ is bounded then the cut-off phenomenon does not occur, and more precisely I give a lower bound on the size of the cut-off window in terms of $|A(p)|$. A natural conjecture from random walk on a graph is that the total variation mixing time is bounded by maximum degree times diameter squared.
2015 Nov 05

# Groups & Dynamics : Ilya Khayutin (HUJI)

9:45am to 11:00am

## Location:

Manchester building, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, (Room 209)
Title: Arithmetic of Double Torus Quotients and the Distribution of Periodic Torus Orbits Abstract: In this talk I will describe some new arithmetic invariants for pairs of torus orbits on inner forms of PGLn and SLn. These invariants allow us to significantly strengthen results towards the equidistribution of packets of periodic torus orbits on higher rank S-arithmetic quotients. An important aspect of our method is that it applies to packets of periodic orbits of maximal tori which are only partially split.
2016 Jun 02

# Groups & dynamics: Todor Tsankov (Paris-Diderot): On metrizable universal minimal flows

10:00am to 11:00am

## Location:

Ross building, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, (Room 70)
To every topological group, one can associate a unique universal minimal flow (UMF): a flow that maps onto every minimal flow of the group. For some groups (for example, the locally compact ones), this flow is not metrizable and does not admit a concrete description. However, for many "large" Polish groups, the UMF is metrizable, can be computed, and carries interesting combinatorial information. The talk will concentrate on some new results that give a characterization of metrizable UMFs of Polish groups. It is based on two papers, one joint