Large scale geometry systematically ignores properties of a metric space
that are present only at a fixed finite scale. For example, a bounded
metric space appears to be a point when viewed from sufficiently far
away, and the real numbers and integers become indistinguishable. Ideas
and methods from large scale geometry play an important role in the
study of several important problems in high dimensional topology and
operator algebra theory, including the Borel, Baum-Connes and Novikov
conjectures.
In joint work in progress with Romain Tessera and Guoliang Yu we
introduce the notion of finite decomposition complexity, a large scale
property of metric spaces that generalizes the notion of finite
asymptotic dimension. In the talk we shall focus on giving examples of
groups with finite decomposition complexity. We may, as time allows,
discuss applications to questions of topological rigidity.
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Last modified: April 11 2016 - 18:14:43