Character varieties and Algebraic entropy

Seminar: 
Geometry & Topology
Event time: 
Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - 11:30am to Monday, February 7, 2011 - 7:00pm
Location: 
431 DL
Speaker: 
Asaf Hadari
Speaker affiliation: 
University of Chicago
Event description: 

Given a surface S, and a group G, one can construct a variety (called a character variety) which parametrizes all representation from $\pi_{1}(S)$ to G up to conjugacy. The mapping class group of S acts on these varieties, an action whose dynamics of this action have been the subject of much study. For a given mapping class, and and a wide collection of character varieties, we compute an invariant called algebraic entropy which gives a measure of the complexity of the action which has an algebraic flavor.