University Muenster

Three conjectures on group rings of torsion-free groups are commonly attributed to Kaplansky, namely the unit, zero divisor and idempotent conjectures. For example, the zero divisor conjecture predicts that if $K$ is a field and $G$ is a torsion-free group, then the group ring $K[G]$ has no zero divisors. I will survey what is known about the conjectures, including their relationships to each other and to other conjectures and group properties, and present my recent counterexample to the unit conjecture.

The construction of the asymptotic cone of a metric space which allows one to capture the "large scale geometry" of that space has been introduced by Gromov and refined by van den Dries and Wilkie in the 1980's. Since then asymptotic cones have mainly been used as important invariants for finitely generated groups, regarded as metric spaces using the word metric.

However since the construction of the cone requires non-principal ultrafilters, in many cases the cone itself is very hard to compute and seemingly basic questions about this construction have been open quite some time and only relatively recently been answered.

In this talk I want to review the definition of the cone as well as considering iterated cones of metric spaces. I will show that every proper metric space can arise as asymptotic cone of some other proper space and I will answer a question of Drutu and Sapir regarding slow ultrafilters.