UBC Math Department Seminar: Kasia Jankiewicz

Artin groups are a family of groups that generalize braid groups, and are closely related to Coxeter groups. They are mysterious - a lot of basic questions about them remain unanswered. In this talk, I will focus on profinite properties of Artin groups, such as residual finiteness, and the connection between the group and its profinite completion. Informally, those properties tell us if the geometry and the algebra of the group can be approximated by its finite quotients. I will discuss some of my work, including joint work with Kevin Schreve.