Tuesday Seminar on Topology

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Date, time & place Tuesday 17:00 - 18:30 056Room #056 (Graduate School of Math. Sci. Bldg.)
Organizer(s) KAWAZUMI Nariya, KITAYAMA Takahiro, SAKASAI Takuya

2007/07/10

16:30-18:00   Room #056 (Graduate School of Math. Sci. Bldg.)
Danny C. Calegari (California Institute of Technology)
Combable functions, quasimorphisms, and the central limit theorem
(joint with Koji Fujiwara)

[ Abstract ]
Quasimorphisms on groups are dual to stable commutator length,
and detect extremal phenomena in topology and dynamics. In typical groups
(even in a free group) stable commutator length is very difficult to
calculate, because the space of quasimorphisms is too large to study
directly without adding more structure.
In this talk, we show that a large class of quasimorphisms - the so-called
"counting quasimorphisms" on word-hyperbolic groups - can be effectively
described using simple machines called finite state automata. From this,
and from the ergodic theory of finite directed graphs, one can deduce a
number of properties about the statistical distribution of the values of a
counting quasimorphism on elements of the group.