Travel Funding for International Conference (Groups-2003)

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Principal Investigator: Vaughan F. JonesProposal Number: DMS-0307231Institution: University of California, BerkeleyTechnical AbstractThe main topic of the conference ``Groups--2003'' in Gaeta, Italy is Discrete Groups. It will concentrate on: groups generated by finite automata, hyperbolic groups in the sense of Gromov, Burnside groups, lattices in Lie groups, groups of intermediate growth, anddiscrete groups of Lie type. The questions concerning these groups are related to many areas of mathematics mentioned in the next section. The subjects discussed during the conference will be related to growth of groups, subgroup growth, property (T), expanders and Ramanujan graphs, amenability, non-commutative dynamical systems, random walks on groups, formal languages, branch groups, automata groups, fractal groups and fractal sets, computation of spectra of Hecke operators, L2-invariants, bounded cohomology, and the structure of lattices in Lie groups. A special emphasis will be put on branch groups, as this conference is dedicated to R. Grigorchuk on the occasion of his 50th anniversary. The main topic of the conference belongs of course to Group Theory, but it is also closely related to Dynamical Systems, Ergodic Theory, Geometry of Metric Spaces, Low-dimensional Topology, Discrete Mathematics, Harmonic Analysis, Operator Algebras,Representations of Groups, and L2 Cohomology. Non-Technical AbstractThe planned conference ``Groups--2003'' in Gaeta, Italy intends to be a meeting point for mathematicians with various specialties, with group theory serving as a unifying ground. While centered on abstract algebra, participants with a background from statistics, theoretical physics as well as the broad spectrum of pure mathematics will contribute talks that stress as much as possible the unifying nature of mathematics in general, and group theory in particular. Time will generously be alloted for informal discussion and fruitful exchanges between the participants. These will comprise both internationallyrenowned experts and graduate students or young researchers who wish to embark in the rapidly progressing field. Proceedings of the conference will be edited, and assemble contributions from the participants. This conference is fittingly dedicated to Professor Grigorchuk for his 50th birthday, who by his numerous contributions to various diverse fields of mathematics has illustrated the goals of this conference.