RTG Study Seminar -- Winter 2009

Thursdays 4:10-6:00 -- East Hall 3866

PAST SEMINARS: Fall 08 Winter 08 Fall 07  Winter 07 Fall 06  Winter 06 

To schedule a talk, or for more information, please contact Pekka Pankka (pankka 'at' umich.edu) or Lars Louder (llouder 'at' umich.edu).

Thursday, Jan 29

Speaker: Mario Bonk
Title: Isometric actions on trees and degenerations of hyperbolic structures

Abstract: Let H^n(G) be the space of conjugacy classes of discrete and faithful representations of a discrete group G in the isometry group of hyperbolic n-space. According to a theorem due to Culler, Morgan and Shalen H^n(G) admits a natural compactification arising from isometric actions of G on real trees. I will present a proof of this fact due to M. Bestvina.