Montreal Geometric & Combinatorial Group Theory Seminar

Speaker: Alexander Borovik (UMIST)

Title: “Black Box Groups and the Andrews-Curtis Conjecture”

Date: 3:30pm Wednesday, January 22nd

Room: 920 Burnside

Abstract:

A "black box" is a device or routine which produces (pseudo)random elements from an unknown group G. Some problems of computational algebra (and cryptography) require "guessing" the isomorphism type of G from properties of a random sample of its elements. The talk links some problems in the theory

of black box groups with the Andrews-Curtis conjecture in

algebraic topology.