Correspondences between harmonic functions and algebraic properties of groups.

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Matthew Tointon (University of Cambridge)
• Friday 21 October 2016, 13:45-15:00
• CMS, MR13.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Maurice Chiodo.

Let G be a group generated by a finite symmetric set S. By analogy with harmonic functions on manifolds, one can define the space H(G) of harmonic functions on G with respect to S as consisting of those functions f : G → R for which f(x) is always equal to the average of the values of f(xs) with s in S.

I will describe some results and conjectures relating certain properties of H(G) to certain algebraic properties of G. In particular, I will present a proof that H(G) is finite dimensional if and only if G is virtually cyclic. The proof uses functional analysis, polynomials on groups, and random walks, amongst other things.

Questions of this type are to some extent motivated by Kleiner’s proof of Gromov’s polynomial growth theorem.

Some of the work I will discuss is joint with Meyerovitch, Perl and Yadin.

This talk is part of the Geometric Group Theory (GGT) Seminar series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All CMS events
• CMS Events
• CMS, MR13
• DPMMS info aggregator
• Geometric Group Theory (GGT) Seminar
• Hanchen DaDaDash
• Interested Talks
• bld31

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.