Georgia Institute of Technology School of Mathematics | Georgia Institute of Technology | Atlanta, GA

In the world of finite-type surfaces, one of the key tools to studying the mapping class group is to study its action on the curve graph. The curve graph is a combinatorial object intrinsic to the surface, and its appeal lies in the fact that it is infinite-diameter and $\delta$-hyperbolic. For infinite-type surfaces, the curve graph disappointingly has diameter 2. However, all hope is not lost! In this talk I will introduce the omnipresent arc graph and we will see that for a large collection of infinite-type surfaces, the graph is infinite-diameter and $\delta$-hyperbolic. The talk will feature a new characterization of infinite-type surfaces, which provided the impetus for this project.

This is joint work with Federica Fanoni and Alan McLeay

Complex dynamics is the study of dynamical systems defined by iterating rational maps on the Riemann sphere. For a rational map f, the Julia set Jf  is a beautiful fractal defined as the repeller of the dynamics of f. Fractal invariants of Julia sets, such as Hausdorff dimensions, have information about the complexity of the dynamics of rational maps. Ahlfors-regular conformal dimension, abbreviated by ARconfdim, is the infimum of the Hausdorff dimension in a quasi-symmetric class of Ahlfors-regular metric spaces. The ARconfdim is an important quantity especially in geometric group theory because a natural metric, called a visual metric, on the boundary of any Gromov hyperbolic group is determined up to quasi-symmetry. In the spirit of Sullivan's dictionary, we can use ARconfdim to understand the dynamics of rational maps as well. In this talk, we show that the Julia set of a post-critically finite hyperbolic rational map f has ARconfdim 1 if and only if there is an f-invariant graph G containing the post-critical set such that the dynamics restricted to G has topological entropy zero.  

Given a knot K in the 3-sphere, the 4-genus of K is the minimal genus of an orientable surface embedded in the 4-ball with boundary K. If the knot K has a symmetry (e.g. K is periodic or strongly invertible), one can define the equivariant 4-genus by only minimising the genus over those surfaces in the 4-ball which respect the symmetry of the knot. I'll discuss some work with Keegan Boyle trying to understanding the equivariant 4-genus.

Bestvina--Brady groups are subgroups of right-angled Artin groups, and their Dehn functions are bounded above by quartic functions. There are examples of Bestvina--Brady groups whose Dehn functions are linear, quadratic, cubic, and quartic. In this talk, I will give a class of Bestvina--Brady groups that have polynomial Dehn functions, and we can identify the Dehn functions by the defining graphs of those Bestvina--Brady groups.