Quasi-hyperbolic planes in hyperbolic and relatively hyperbolic groups
Abstract
In 2005, Bonk and Kleiner showed that a hyperbolic group admits a
quasi-isometrically embedded copy of the hyperbolic plane if and only if the
group is not virtually free. This answered a question of Papasoglu. I will
discuss a generalisation of their result to certain relatively hyperbolic
groups (joint work with Alessandro Sisto). Key tools involved are new
existence results for quasi-circles, and a better understanding of the
geometry of boundaries of relatively hyperbolic groups.
An introduction to the invariant quaternion algebra associated to a hyperbolic 3-manifold.
Abstract
I will show how to associate a quaternion algebra to a hyperbolic 3-manifold. I will then go through some examples and applications of this theory
Bootstrap percolation on infinite trees
Abstract
While usual percolation concerns the study of the connected components of
random subgraphs of an infinite graph, bootstrap percolation is a type of
cellular automaton, acting on the vertices of a graph which are in one of
two states: `healthy' or `infected'. For any positive integer $r$, the
$r$-neighbour bootstrap process is the following update rule for the
states of vertices: infected vertices remain infected forever and each
healthy vertex with at least $r$ infected neighbours becomes itself
infected. These updates occur simultaneously and are repeated at discrete
time intervals. Percolation is said to occur if all vertices are
eventually infected.
As it is often difficult to determine precisely which configurations of
initially infected vertices percolate, one often considers a random case,
with each vertex infected independently with a fixed probability $p$. For
an infinite graph, of interest are the values of $p$ for which the
probability of percolation is positive. I will give some of the history
of this problem for regular trees and present some new results for
bootstrap percolation on certain classes of randomly generated trees:
Galton--Watson trees.
Conditional bounds for the Riemann zeta-function via Fourier analysis.
Abstract
In this talk I will present the best up-to-date bounds for the argument of the Riemann zeta-function on the critical line, assuming the Riemann hypothesis. The method applies to other objects related to the Riemann zeta-function and uses certain special families of functions of exponential type. This is a joint work with Vorrapan Chandee (Montreal) and Micah Milinovich (Mississipi).