This second volume of a two-volume book contains selected papers from the international conference Groups St Andrews 2009. Leading researchers in their respective areas, including Eammon O'Brien, Mark Sapir and Dan Segal, survey the latest developments in algebra.

These proceedings of 'Groups St Andrews 2017' provide a snapshot of the state-of-the-art in contemporary group theory.

Leading researchers survey the latest developments in group theory and many related areas.

In recent times, group theory has found wider applications in various fields of algebra and mathematics in general. But in order to apply this or that result, you need to know about it, and such results are often diffuse and difficult to locate, necessitating that readers construct an extended search through multiple monographs, articles, and papers. Such readers must wade through the morass of concepts and auxiliary statements that are needed to understand the desired results, while it is initially unclear which of them are really needed and which ones can be dispensed with. A further difficulty that one may encounter might be concerned with the form or language in which a given result is presented. For example, if someone knows the basics of group theory, but does not know the theory of representations, and a group theoretical result is formulated in the language of representation theory, then that person is faced with the problem of translating this result into the language with which they are familiar, etc. Infinite Groups: A Roadmap to Some Classical Areas seeks to overcome this challenge. The book covers a broad swath of the theory of infinite groups, without giving proofs, but with all the concepts and auxiliary results necessary for understanding such results. In other words, this book is an extended directory, or a guide, to some of the more established areas of infinite groups. Features An excellent resource for a subject formerly lacking an accessible and in-depth reference Suitable for graduate students, PhD students, and researchers working in group theory Introduces the reader to the most important methods, ideas, approaches, and constructions in infinite group theory.

This book contains surveys and research articles on the state-of-the-art in finitely presented groups for researchers and graduate students. Overviews of current trends in exponential groups and of the classification of finite triangle groups and finite generalized tetrahedron groups are complemented by new results on a conjecture of Rosenberger and an approximation theorem. A special emphasis is on algorithmic techniques and their complexity, both for finitely generated groups and for finite Z-algebras, including explicit computer calculations highlighting important classical methods. A further chapter surveys connections to mathematical logic, in particular to universal theories of various classes of groups, and contains new results on countable elementary free groups. Applications to cryptography include overviews of techniques based on representations of p-groups and of non-commutative group actions. Further applications of finitely generated groups to topology and artificial intelligence complete the volume. All in all, leading experts provide up-to-date overviews and current trends in combinatorial group theory and its connections to cryptography and other areas.

An Invitation to Computational Homotopy is an introduction to elementary algebraic topology for those with an interest in computers and computer programming. It expertly illustrates how the basics of the subject can be implemented on a computer through its focus on fully-worked examples designed to develop problem solving techniques. The transition from basic theory to practical computation raises a range of non-trivial algorithmic issues which will appeal to readers already familiar with basic theory and who are interested in developing computational aspects. The book covers a subset of standard introductory material on fundamental groups, covering spaces, homology, cohomology and classifying spaces as well as some less standard material on crossed modules. These topics are covered in a way that hints at potential applications of topology in areas of computer science and engineering outside the usual territory of pure mathematics, and also in a way that demonstrates how computers can be used to perform explicit calculations within the domain of pure algebraic topology itself. The initial chapters include in-depth examples from data mining, biology and digital image analysis, while the later chapters cover a range of computational examples on the cohomology of classifying spaces that are likely beyond the reach of a purely paper-and-pen approach to the subject. An Invitation to Computational Homotopy serves as a self-contained and informal introduction to these topics and their implementation in the sphere of computer science. Written in a dynamic and engaging style, it skilfully showcases a range of useful machine computations, and will serve as an invaluable aid to graduate students working with algebraic topology.

Probabilistic Group Theory, Combinatorics and Computing is based on lecture courses held at the Fifth de Brún Workshop in Galway, Ireland in April 2011. Each course discusses computational and algorithmic aspects that have recently emerged at the interface of group theory and combinatorics, with a strong focus on probabilistic methods and results. The courses served as a forum for devising new strategic approaches and for discussing the main open problems to be solved in the further development of each area. The book represents a valuable resource for advanced lecture courses. Researchers at all levels are introduced to the main methods and the state-of-the-art, leading up to the very latest developments. One primary aim of the book’s approach and design is to enable postgraduate students to make immediate use of the material presented.

The development of algebraic geometry over groups, geometric group theory and group-based cryptography, has led to there being a tremendous recent interest in infinite group theory. This volume presents a good collection of papers detailing areas of current interest.

This volume focuses on group theory and model theory with a particular emphasis on the interplay of the two areas. The survey papers provide an overview of the developments across group, module, and model theory while the research papers present the most recent study in those same areas. With introductory sections that make the topics easily accessible to students, the papers in this volume will appeal to beginning graduate students and experienced researchers alike. As a whole, this book offers a cross-section view of the areas in group, module, and model theory, covering topics such as DP-minimal groups, Abelian groups, countable 1-transitive trees, and module approximations. The papers in this book are the proceedings of the conference “New Pathways between Group Theory and Model Theory,” which took place February 1-4, 2016, in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany, in honor of the editors’ colleague Rüdiger Göbel. This publication is dedicated to Professor Göbel, who passed away in 2014. He was one of the leading experts in Abelian group theory.

Advances in discrete mathematics are presented in this book with applications in theoretical mathematics and interdisciplinary research. Each chapter presents new methods and techniques by leading experts. Unifying interdisciplinary applications, problems, and approaches of discrete mathematics, this book connects topics in graph theory, combinatorics, number theory, cryptography, dynamical systems, finance, optimization, and game theory. Graduate students and researchers in optimization, mathematics, computer science, economics, and physics will find the wide range of interdisciplinary topics, methods, and applications covered in this book engaging and useful.