Wolfgang Lück - Introduction to L2-invariants - Geometric Topology Workshop

Principal Talk #1 at the 32nd Annual Geometric Topology Workshop, June 25, 2015, at TCU

Abstract: We give an introduction to L^2-homology and L^2-Betti numbers which generalizes the well-known classical notions of homology and Betti numbers. They have surprising applications to problems in topology, geometry, and group theory which a priori seem not to be related but whose proofs require L^2-techniques. We also discuss some open conjectures and will briefly treat L^2-torsion, which is the analogue of Reidemeister torsion.

The workshop was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (DMS-1461385), by the TCU College of Science and Engineering, and by the TCU Department of Mathematics.