Groups in Galway 2011

6-7 May, 2011

Groups in Galway has been running on an annual basis since 1978. The scope of the conference covers all areas of group theory, applications, and related fields. All who are interested are invited to attend. The webpage of last year's Groups in Galway conference is located here.

Speakers

Confirmed speakers at the moment include

Schedule

Below is a tentative schedule which may still change but only minimally. All talks will be in IT125 in the IT Building.

Move the cursor over a title for a short abstract.

Friday 6 May

10.00-10.45 Tobias Roßmann Irreducibility Testing of Nilpotent Matrix Groups We describe an algorithm for deciding irreducibility of nilpotent matrix groups over number fields. In the case of finite nilpotent groups, we obtain a fully constructive algorithm which also performs well in practice.

11.00-11.45 Dave Johnson The Fibonacci Story Sie ist endlich, sie ist unendlich, sie ist endlich, sie ist unendlich, ...

11.45-12.15 Coffee/tea

12.15-1.00 Lars Louder Nielsen Equivalence of Generating Sets for Surface Groups I will prove that generating sets of surface groups are either reducible or Nielsen equivalent to standard generating sets, improving upon a theorem of Zieschang. Equivalently, Aut(Fn) acts transitively on Epi(Fn, S) when S is a surface group.

1.00-2.30 Lunch

2.30-3.15 Bettina Eick p-Groups, Coclass and Schur Multiplicators We exhibit recent advances in the understanding of the Schur multiplicators of finite p-groups using coclass theory as main tool for the investigation.

3.15-4.00 Matjaž Konvalinka Weighted Branching Rule for the Hook Lengths The hook length formula is a famous result that gives the number of standard Young tableau of a certain shape, and the dimension of the corresponding irreducible representation of the symmetric group. It is trivially equivalent to the branching rule for the hook lengths. In the talk, I will give a bijective proof of a new, weighted version of the branching rule. Time permitting, I will discuss some variants of the bijection that yield other interesting formulas, including the dimensionality theorem for the symmetric group.

4.00-4.15 Martin Newell Non-dissolvable Groups Surprise, surprise!

4.15-5.00 Coffee/tea

5.00 Everyone Present Can we prove something worthwile? - Mathematics Live How long does it take to come up with a result?
Given a f.g. group G, define the commuting graph C(G) on the vertex set G by putting an undirected edge between two elements if and only if they commute. Suppose the induced subgraphs Ci of C(G) by the vertices of a strictly increasing sequence Bi of finite subsets of G with union G has more than P% of the edges of the complete graph on |Bi| vertices for a large number of i. How close is G to being abelian?
    This question was posed to me by Armando Martino but I think Enric is also thinking about it and I'm sure they don't mind getting it out of the way.
    The idea is to try to find and answer one mathematically sound version of this question usind the combined power of differently trained expert brains in less than 150min.
    Students are particularly encouraged to join. This is your chance to see that failure is common or
GET UR NAME ON A PAPER hopefully.

7.30 Conference Dinner: Vina Mara, Middle Street

Saturday 7 May

10.00-10.45 Sinéad Lyle Representations of the Symmetric Groups The ordinary irreducible representations of the symmetric groups Sn are reasonably well understood. They are indexed by partitions of n, and there are closed formulae for their dimensions. By contrast, the modular representation theory is less well understood. We will discuss what is actually known.

10.45-11.15 Coffee/tea

11.15-12.00 Collin Bleak Minimal non-solvable Subgroups of Thompson's Group F Sorry, no abstract.

12.15-1.00 Enric Ventura On the Difficulty of Inverting Automorphisms of Free Groups Let G be a group and X a finite set of generators. In this talk, we will introduce a function f(n) whose asymptotic behavior measures how difficult it is to invert automorphisms of G. More precisely, f(n) is the maximum norm of the inverses of all those automorphisms of G whose norm is at most n. After analyzing some general properties of this new function, we will restrict our attention to the free abelian and free cases. For all such groups we will show that f(n) is polynomial.


Travel

There are regular rail connections from Dublin to Galway, and bus connections from all Irish cities and towns.
From Dublin airport there are also direct busses to Galway operated by Citylink and GoBus.
There are direct flights to Galway Airport from Belfast, Dublin, Luton, London Southend, Manchester and Edinburgh. The Airport is 7kms from the NUI Galway campus. Taxis typically cost €20-25.
Directions to NUI Galway by road can be found here .
NUI Galway has a number of pay-and-display parking places for visitors. Cars parked in other spaces on the NUI Galway campus and not displaying a valid parking permit will be clamped.

Accommodation

The following hotels and guest houses are convenient for the NUI Galway campus: Please contact Ireland West for further information about accommodation near NUI Galway.

For further information, please keep an eye on this website which will be updated regularly, or contact the organiser Claas Röver.

Groups in Galway 2011 is generously supported by