Topology & Geometric Group Theory Seminar

Fall 2009

1:30 – 2:30, Malott 203

Thursday, October 8

Will Dison, University of Bristol


Dehn functions of Bestvina–Brady groups

Bestvina–Brady groups were introduced to solve the long-standing question of whether the homological and homotopical finiteness properties Fn and FPn are equivalent. The Dehn function is a group invariant that (in some sense) measures the complexity of the word problem of a given group. It also has a geometric interpretation in terms of bounding the areas of filling discs of loops. In this talk I will give some background and introduction to these two topics, before outlining a proof of the following result: Every finitely presented Bestvina–Brady group has at worst a quartic Dehn function.

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