QLunch: Damian Osajda

Speaker: Damian Osajda

Title: Burnside groups and Kazhdan's property (T)

Abstract: 

Burnside groups are finitely generated infinite torsion groups (every element has finite order) of bounded exponent (there is a uniform bound on orders). Such groups were first constructed by Novikov-Adyan over a half century ago, but are still mysterious. Disproving a conjecture by Shalom I showed that many of Burnside groups do not have Kazhdan's property (T).

I will present an elementary proof.