Texas A&M University, Department of Mathematics, 216 Milner Hall, 16th of September 2009, 3:00-3:50

Groups and Dynamics Seminar


On Furstenberg's proof of Szemeredi's Theorem

David Kerr of Texas A&M University


I will survey the main ideas in Furstenberg's ergodic-theoretic proof of Szemeredi's theorem on the existence of arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions in sets of integers of positive upper density. Included will be a discussion of some of the operator-algebraic issues that arise in connection with the underlying Furstenberg-Zimmer structure theorem for measure-preserving systems.