Details
Wednesday, April 8, 2009 4:00 PM PHSC 809
Tea will be served at 3:30 PM in PHSC 424.
Abstract Suppose H is a finitely presented group, and let w be a word representing the identity in H. Then w can be written as the product of conjugates of relators; the minimal such number is defined to be the area of w. If H is a subgroup of G, also finitely presented, then it is possible that the area of w in G is much less than its area in H. We will define the area distortion function, which provides a measure for this difference, and which is closely related to Dehn functions. We will also give a number of examples, particularly in the case of abelian subgroups in abelian-by-cyclic groups.