[Binghamton Geometry Topology Seminar] Reminder: seminar today at 4:30

[sapir at math.binghamton.edu]

A quick reminder that we have a special meeting of the geometry and
topology seminar today at 4:30pm in 100E.

Speaker: Yash Lodha (EPFL)
Title: Property FW and smoothability

Abstract: I shall describe joint work with Matte Bon and Triestino. We
demonstrate that aperiodic actions of Kazhdan groups by countably singular
diffeomorphisms on closed manifolds are smoothable. In the case of the
circle, we obtain a proof that groups of piecewise linear or piecewise
projective homeomorphisms are not Kazhdan unless they are finite. The key
new idea is the application of Property FW, which is a weakening of
Kazhdan's property (T).