Fall 2004–05

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Grading policy:  Those taking the course for credit will be required to take notes.

Course Description:  This course will introduce R-trees and their basic properties, and discuss some of the applications of this theory to geometric group theory and topology. Possible topics include: Bass-Serre theory; measured laminations and the Rips machine; R-trees as limiting objects; and applications to free groups, word-hyperbolic groups and low-dimensional topology.

Reading:  `Trees' by J.-P. Serre
'Topological methods in group theory' by Scott and Wall
`Dendrology of groups' and `Dendrology and its applications' by P. Shalen
`R-trees in topology, geometry and group theory' by M. Bestvina
`Introduction to Lambda-trees' by I. Chiswell.

More details given in first lecture.

Instructor:   Daniel Groves groves@caltech.edu