Speaker
Prof. Alex Lubotzky (Einstein Institute of Mathematics, Hebrew University)
Video release
13 January 2021, 18:00
Interactive session
27 January 2021, 18:00 to 18:45
Venue
Virtual colloquium
Pre-recorded video

Several well-known open questions (such as: are all groups sofic or hyperlinear?) have a common form: can all groups be approximated by asymptotic homomorphisms into the symmetric groups Sym(n) (in the sofic case) or the unitary groups U(n) ( in the hyperlinear case )?

In the case of U(n), the question can be asked with respect to different metrics and norms. We answer, for the first time, one of these versions, showing that there exist finitely presented groups which are not approximated by U(n) with respect to the Frobenius (=L2) norm.

The strategy is via the notion of 'stability': some higher dimensional cohomology vanishing phenomena is proven to imply stability and using higher dimensional expanders, it is shown that some non-residually finite groups (central extensions of some lattices in p-adic Lie groups) are Frobenious stable and hence cannot be Frobenius approximated.

All notions will be explained. Joint work with M. De Chiffre, L. Glebsky and A. Thom.

Participants are requested to submit their questions for the speaker through the following form:

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The above form will stop accepting responses at 18:00 (Indian standard time) on January 25, 2021.

This colloquium is part of the Distinguished Lecture Series (DLS) organized by The (Indian) Mathematics Consortium (TMC), and co-hosted by IIT-B and ICTS-TIFR. For more information about this lecture series, and to register, please visit the homepage of the TMC DLS.