Seminar series
Date
Tue, 01 Dec 2015
Time
14:15 -
15:15
Location
L4
Speaker
Peter Varju
Organisation
Cambridge
Abstract: This is a joint work with E. Breuillard.
A conjecture of Breuillard asserts that for every positive integer d, there is a positive constant c such that the following holds. Let S be a finite subset of GL(d,C) that generates a group, which is not virtually nilpotent. Then |S^n|>exp(cn) for all n.
Considering an algebraic number a that is not a root of unity and the semigroup generated by the affine transformations x-> ax+1, x-> ax+1, the above conjecture implies that the Mahler measure of a is at least 1+c' for some c'>0 depending on c. This property is known as Lehmer's conjecture.
I will talk about the converse of this implication, namely that Lehmer's conjecture implies the uniform growth conjecture of
Breuillard.