Abstract

Speaker: Zoran Sunik, Texas A&M University

Title: Thompson's group and its relations to Combinatorics

Abstract:

Thompson's group arose in the 60's in the context of algebraic logic where it relates associativity law with its consequences. However, it was realized over the years that the variety of contexts and disguises in which Thompson' group naturally appears is rather extraordinary. We will briefly mention some of those (construction of finitely presented simple groups, homotopy idempotents, piecewise linear homeomorphisms of the unit interval and the real line, groups of type F-infinity, Cantor algebras, etc.).

Then we will concentrate on connections to combinatorial objects and notions such as binary forests, Catalan numbers, 231-avoiding permutations, symmetric groups, intervals in the weak Bruhat order, etc.

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