[Binghamton Geometry/Topology Seminar] 2 talks March 12

[Marco Varisco]

BINGHAMTON GEOMETRY/TOPOLOGY SEMINAR
  http://www.math.binghamton.edu/dept/topsem/

We have two talks this Thursday.

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FIRST TALK:

Date:  Thursday, March 12, 2009

Time:  2:50 pm

Place:  Library North 2205
  (followed by coffee/tea in the Anderson Reading Room)

Speaker:  Holger Reich (University of Düsseldorf, Germany)

Title:  Lattices in rank 1 and K-theory

Abstract:  The Farrell-Jones conjecture predicts that the K-theory of
a group Γ can be built up from the K-theory of virtually cyclic
subgroups of Γ. Suppose G is a semisimple, simple real Lie group or
rank one. We prove the Farrell-Jones conjecture when Γ is a lattice in
G, i.e., Γ is a discrete subgroup of G and G/Γ has finite invariant
volume. There is an analogous result for L-theory. There is a large
overlap with already existing results of Farrell-Jones and
Berkove-Farrell-Juan-Pineda-Pearson, but new groups are covered and
the result holds for higher K-theory and arbitrary coefficient rings.

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SECOND TALK:

Date:  Thursday, March 12, 2009

Time:  4:30 pm

Place:  Library North 2205

Speaker:  Max Horn (University of Darmstadt, Germany)

Title:  Unitary forms of Kac-Moody groups

Abstract:  Locally finite Kac-Moody groups generalize finite groups of
Lie-type in a natural way. While the latter are finite groups, the
former are in general not, but have interesting finiteness properties
(such as being finitely generated in general, or finitely presented if
they are of two-spherical type). An important tool in the study of
both classes of groups are so-called Tits buildings. In the present
talk, we introduce the notion of a (generalized) unitary form of a
Kac-Moody group, and present a result on finite generation of these
groups.