Seminar 2.22.18 Cyr

Title: The automorphism group of a zero entropy symbolic system

Speaker: Van Cyr (Bucknell)

Abstract: The symmetries of a symbolic dynamical system X form an interesting and often complicated group called its automorphism group. Although this group is always countable, it is frequently extremely complex for positive entropy subshifts (containing free subgroups, the fundamental group of every 2-manifold, and every finite group). By contrast, the group of automorphisms of a zero entropy subshift is often considerably more tame and it has been possible to prove a number of strong algebraic results. In this talk I will discuss some of these results and open problems.