- Series
- Combinatorics Seminar
- Time
- Friday, September 4, 2020 - 3:00pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
- Location
- https://bluejeans.com/751242993/PASSWORD (To receive the password, please email Lutz Warnke)
- Speaker
- Brendan Murphy – University of Bristol
- Organizer
- Lutz Warnke
Freiman's theorem characterizes finite subsets of abelian groups that behave "approximately" like subgroups: any such set is (roughly) a sum of arithmetic progressions and a finite subgroup. Quantifying Freiman's theorem is an important area of additive combinatorics; in particular, proving a "polynomial" Freiman theorem would be extremely useful.
The "Helfgott-Lindenstrauss conjecture" describes the structure of finite subsets of non-abelian groups that behave approximately like subgroups: any such set is (roughly) a finite extension of a nilpotent group. Breuillard, Green, and Tao proved a qualitative version of this conjecture. In general, a "polynomial" version of the HL conjecture cannot hold, but we prove that a polynomial version of the HL conjecture is true for linear groups of bounded rank.
In this talk, we will see how the "sum-product phenomenon" and its generalizations play a crucial role in the proof of this result. The amount of group theory needed is minimal.