16:00
Stable commutator length in free and surface groups
Abstract
Stable commutator length (scl) is a measure of homological complexity in groups that has attracted attention for its various connections with geometric topology and group theory. In this talk, I will introduce scl and discuss the (hard) problem of computing scl in surface groups. I will present some results concerning isometric embeddings of free groups for scl, and how they generalise to surface groups for the relative Gromov seminorm.