Topology & Geometric Group Theory Seminar

Spring 2009

1:30 – 2:30, Malott 207

Tuesday, March 31

Tim Riley, University of Bristol and Cornell University (soon)


How wild can a group with a quadratic Dehn function be?

Loops in Euclidean space bound discs of area at most a constant times the square of their length — that is, Euclidean space "enjoys a quadratic isoperimetric inequality". To a finitely presentable group, one can associate a simply connected space modeling the group geometrically. The group "has a quadratic Dehn function" when this space enjoys a quadratic isoperimetric inequality. I will survey this class of groups.

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