Benson Farb, University of Chicago
The asymptotic geometry of groups
Every finitely-generated group can be viewed as a metric space in a way which is unique up to maps of bounded distortion. In this talk I will discuss the recent discovery that many finitely-generated groups are actually determined uniquely by their asymptotic geometry. I will also describe how this phenomenon relates to the Mostow Rigidity Theorem, Gromov's Polynomial Growth Theorem, and Dynamical Systems.