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Flat Lorentz 3-manifolds: an overview
by
Bill Goldman
University of Maryland
This talk will survey topological, geometric and dynamical aspects of an unusual class of geometric structures on noncompact 3-manifolds: quotients of R^3 by proper actions of discrete groups of affine transformations. In 1977 Milnor asked whether a nonabelian free group admits such an action, and in 1983 Margulis proved such actions exist. In 1990 Drumm gave an explicit geometric construction. I will discuss the history of these examples, and present the current status of their classification.
Date received: April 28, 2003
Copyright © 2003 by the author(s). The author(s) of this work and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Topology Atlas. Document # calc-04.