University of Arkansas Topology Seminar: 3/17/2022

Speaker: Jean-Pierre Mutanguha

Title: Canonical forms for free group automorphisms

The Nielsen–Thurston theory of surface homeomorphisms can be thought of as a surface analogue to the Jordan Canonical Form. I will discuss my progress in developing a similar decomposition for free group automorphisms. (Un)Fortunately, free group automorphisms can have arbitrarily complicated behaviour. This forms a significant barrier to translating specific arguments that worked for surfaces into the free group setting; nevertheless, the overall ideas/strategies do translate!



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