Detailed Description

This proceedings volume documents the contributions presented at the conference held at Fairfield University and at the Graduate Center, CUNY in 2018 celebrating the New York Group Theory Seminar, in memoriam Gilbert Baumslag, and to honor Benjamin Fine and Anthony Gaglione. It includes several expert contributions by leading figures in the group theory community and provides a valuable source of information on recent research developments.

The main purpose of this book is to show how ideas from combinatorial group theory have spread to two other areas of mathematics: the theory of Lie algebras and affine algebraic geometry. Some of these ideas, in turn, came to combinatorial group theory from low-dimensional topology at the beginning of the 20th Century. This book is divided into three fairly independent parts. Part I provides a brief exposition of several classical techniques in combinatorial group theory, namely, methods of Nielsen, Whitehead, and Tietze. Part II contains the main focus of the book. Here the authors show how the aforementioned techniques of combinatorial group theory found their way into affine algebraic geometry, a fascinating area of mathematics that studies polynomials and polynomial mappings. Part III illustrates how ideas from combinatorial group theory contributed to the theory of free algebras. The focus here is on Schreier varieties of algebras (a variety of algebras is said to be Schreier if any subalgebra of a free algebra of this variety is free in the same variety of algebras).

The main purpose of this book is to show how ideas from combinatorial group theory have spread to two other areas of mathematics: the theory of Lie algebras and affine algebraic geometry. Some of these ideas, in turn, came to combinatorial group theory from low-dimensional topology in the beginning of the 20th Century.

This book is about relations between three different areas of mathematics and theoretical computer science: combinatorial group theory, cryptography, and complexity theory. It explores how non-commutative (infinite) groups, which are typically studied in combinatorial group theory, can be used in public key cryptography. It also shows that there is remarkable feedback from cryptography to combinatorial group theory because some of the problems motivated by cryptography appear to be new to group theory, and they open many interesting research avenues within group theory. In particular, a lot of emphasis in the book is put on studying search problems, as compared to decision problems traditionally studied in combinatorial group theory. Then, complexity theory, notably generic-case complexity of algorithms, is employed for cryptanalysis of various cryptographic protocols based on infinite groups, and the ideas and machinery from the theory of generic-case complexity are used to study asymptotically dominant properties of some infinite groups that have been applied in public key cryptography so far. This book also describes new interesting developments in the algorithmic theory of solvable groups and another spectacular new development related to complexity of group-theoretic problems, which is based on the ideas of compressed words and straight-line programs coming from computer science.

This book is about relations between three di?erent areas of mathematics and theoreticalcomputer science: combinatorialgroup theory, cryptography, and c- plexity theory. We explorehownon-commutative(in?nite) groups, which arety- callystudiedincombinatorialgrouptheory, canbeusedinpublickeycryptography. We also show that there is a remarkable feedback from cryptography to com- natorial group theory because some of the problems motivated by cryptography appear to be new to group theory, and they open many interesting research - enues within group theory. Then, we employ complexity theory, notably generic case complexity of algorithms, for cryptanalysisof various cryptographicprotocols based on in?nite groups. We also use the ideas and machinery from the theory of generic case complexity to study asymptotically dominant properties of some in?nite groups that have been used in public key cryptography so far. It turns out that for a relevant cryptographic scheme to be secure, it is essential that keys are selected from a "very small" (relative to the whole group, say) subset rather than from the whole group. Detecting these subsets ("black holes") for a part- ular cryptographic scheme is usually a very challenging problem, but it holds the keyto creatingsecurecryptographicprimitives basedonin?nite non-commutative groups. The book isbased onlecture notesfor the Advanced Courseon Group-Based CryptographyheldattheCRM, BarcelonainMay2007. Itisagreatpleasureforus to thank Manuel Castellet, the HonoraryDirector of the CRM, for supporting the idea of this Advanced Course. We are also grateful to the current CRM Director, JoaquimBruna, and to the friendly CRM sta?, especially Mrs. N. PortetandMrs. N. Hern andez, for their help in running the Advanced Course and in preparing the lecture notes."