What Is... Seminar

Timothy Riley
What is subgroup distortion?

Wednesday, March 31, 2021 - 5:30pm
Zoom

When a group is finitely generated, it has a word metric: the distance from a to b is the length of the shortest word on the generators that represents ab^{-1}. The distortion of a finitely generated subgroup H of a finitely generated group G compares H's word metric to the restriction of G's word metric. I will explore the study of subgroups through this lens and will explain how even for seemingly benign families of groups, subgroup distortion can be wild.