Group Theory Seminar

The Group Theory Seminar meets in room B129 of Van Vleck Hall on Tuesdays at 4pm.
For more information, contact Nigel Boston.

Fall 2012

date	speaker	title	host(s)
September 4
September 11
September 18
September 25	Don Passman (Wisconsin)	Group Rings, I.	local
October 2	Don Passman (Wisconsin)	Group Rings, II.	local
October 9	Don Passman (Wisconsin)	Group Rings, III.	local
October 16	Marty Isaacs (Wisconsin)	Character Theory, I.	local
October 23	Marty Isaacs (Wisconsin)	Character Theory, II.	local
October 30	Marty Isaacs (Wisconsin)	Character Theory, III.	local
November 6	Sara Jensen (Wisconsin)	Results on the Character Degree Graph of Finite Groups.	local
November 13	Sarah Rich (Wisconsin)	An Introduction to the Grigorchuk Group and Groups like it.	local
November 20 (week of Thanksgiving)	Sarah Rich (Wisconsin)	Self-Similar Groups and Amenability.	local
November 27	Owen Sizemore (Wisconsin)	Amenability and Dixmier's Problem	local
December 4
December 11	Owen Sizemore (Wisconsin)	Amenability and Dixmier's Problem (II)	local

Fall Abstracts

Don Passman

Group Rings

These three talks will be an introduction to group rings.

Owen Sizemore

Amenability and Dixmier's Problem

This talk will focus on the representation theory of amenable groups. We will begin by giving another characterization of amenable groups in terms of its unitary representations. We will then broaden our scope to look at more arbitrary bounded representations of amenable groups and ask if this gives us additional information about the groups. We will conclude will a proof of the Day/Dixmier result which essentially gives an answer of "no" to the previous question. In subsequent talks we will then look at the same question for nonamenable groups.

Amenability and Dixmier's Problem (II)

In this talk I will prove the Day/Dixmier result showing that all representation of amenable groups are unitarizable. I will then discuss what is known regarding the question of whether this characterizes amenable groups. Time permitting, I will talk about some recent progress and mention connections with random subgroups and ergodic theory.

Spring 2013

date	speaker	title	host(s)
January 22
January 29
February 5
February 12
February 19
February 26
March 5
March 12
March 19
Spring Break
April 2
April 9
April 16
April 23
April 30
May 7