PIRSA:17020036

A reason for representation theorists to play billiards

Fenyes, A. (2017). A reason for representation theorists to play billiards. Perimeter Institute. https://pirsa.org/17020036

Fenyes, Aaron. A reason for representation theorists to play billiards. Perimeter Institute, Feb. 06, 2017, https://pirsa.org/17020036 

          @misc{ pirsa_PIRSA:17020036,
            doi = {10.48660/17020036},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/17020036},
            author = {Fenyes, Aaron},
            keywords = {Mathematical physics},
            language = {en},
            title = {A reason for representation theorists to play billiards},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute},
            year = {2017},
            month = {feb},
            note = {PIRSA:17020036 see, \url{https://pirsa.org}}
          }

Aaron Fenyes

University of Toronto

Talk number
PIRSA:17020036
Collection
Talk Type
Subject
Abstract

Representations of the fundamental groups of surfaces appear so often in geometry that it's tempting to see them primarily as geometric structures. In recent years, however, researchers have uncovered beautiful new features of these representations by thinking of them instead as dynamical systems. As an invitation to the dynamical point of view, I'll describe how geometric tools from the study of billiards can be used to build invariants of surface group representations.