School of Physical Sciences
                  ALGEBRA AND COMBINATORICS SEMINAR

                      Tue 11 Mar 2008 3pm 67-641


 Geodesics in infinite groups - an introduction to geometric group theory

                           Murray Elder

                     University of Queensland
 
Abstract
In this talk I will try to introduce the field of geometric group theory for 
combinatorialists! I will assume you have seen the definition of a group 
somewhere in the past and go from there.

We start with the Cayley graph and consider paths in this graph of minimal 
length, so-called geodesics. We introduce a counting function called the growth
function which counts the number of vertices in the graph at a given distance 
from a basepoint, and this gives a sequence of integers which we can turn into 
a generating function which group theorists call the growth series for the 
group.



All welcome.