Michel Coornaert - Böcker

This book complements the authors’ monograph Cellular Automata and Groups [CAG] (Springer Monographs in Mathematics). It consists of more than 600 fully solved exercises in symbolic dynamics and geometric group theory with connections to geometry and topology, ring and module theory, automata theory and theoretical computer science.

This book complements the authors’ monograph Cellular Automata and Groups [CAG] (Springer Monographs in Mathematics). It consists of more than 600 fully solved exercises in symbolic dynamics and geometric group theory with connections to geometry and topology, ring and module theory, automata theory and theoretical computer science.

This unique book provides a self-contained exposition of the theory of cellular automata on groups and explores its deep connections with recent developments in geometric and combinatorial group theory, amenability, symbolic dynamics, the algebraic theory of group rings, and other branches of mathematics and theoretical computer science.

This unique book provides a self-contained exposition of the theory of cellular automata on groups and explores its deep connections with recent developments in geometric and combinatorial group theory, amenability, symbolic dynamics, the algebraic theory of group rings, and other branches of mathematics and theoretical computer science.

Translated from the popular French edition, the goal of the book is to provide a self-contained introduction to mean topological dimension, an invariant of dynamical systems introduced in 1999 by Misha Gromov. The book examines how this invariant was successfully used by Elon Lindenstrauss and Benjamin Weiss to answer a long-standing open question about embeddings of minimal dynamical systems into shifts.A large number of revisions and additions have been made to the original text. Chapter 5 contains an entirely new section devoted to the Sorgenfrey line. Two chapters have also been added: Chapter 9 on amenable groups and Chapter 10 on mean topological dimension for continuous actions of countable amenable groups. These new chapters contain material that have never before appeared in textbook form. The chapter on amenable groups is based on Følner’s characterization of amenability and may be read independently from the rest of the book.Although the contents of this book lead directly to several active areas of current research in mathematics and mathematical physics, the prerequisites needed for reading it remain modest; essentially some familiarities with undergraduate point-set topology and, in order to access the final two chapters, some acquaintance with basic notions in group theory. Topological Dimension and Dynamical Systems is intended for graduate students, as well as researchers interested in topology and dynamical systems. Some of the topics treated in the book directly lead to research areas that remain to be explored.

The book is an introduction of Gromov's theory of hyperbolic spaces and hyperbolic groups. It contains complete proofs of some basic theorems which are due to Gromov, and emphasizes some important developments on isoperimetric inequalities, automatic groups, and the metric structure on the boundary of a hyperbolic space.

Gromov's theory of hyperbolic groups has had a big impact on combinatorial group theory and has connections with such branches of mathematics as differential geometry, representation theory, ergodic theory and dynamical systems. This book elaborates on some of Gromov's ideas on hyperbolic spaces and hyperbolic groups in relation to symbolic dynamics. Particular attention is paid to the dynamical system defined by the action of a hyperbolic group on its boundary. The boundary is most often chaotic, both as a topological space and as a dynamical system, and a description of this boundary and its action is given in terms of subshifts of finite type. The book is self-contained and includes two introductory chapters, one on Gromov's hyperbolic geometry and the other on symbolic dynamics.

It provides a comprehensive account of recent progress in the theory of cellular automata based on the interplay between amenability, geometric and combinatorial group theory, symbolic dynamics and the algebraic theory of group rings which are treated here for the first time in book form.