Abstract:

A group  is said to commensurate a subgroup , if for all ,  is of finite index in  and , where  denotes the conjugate of  by . The commensuration action of  on  can be studied dynamically. And, we will discuss a range of theorems and conjectures in this context, starting with work of Margulis, and coming to the present day.

About the Speaker:

Mahan Mitra joined the PhD program in mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. He received the Earle C. Anthony Fellowship, U.C. Berkeley in 1992–1993 and the prestigious Sloan Fellowship for 1996–1997. After earning a doctorate from U.C. Berkeley in 1997, he worked briefly at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai in 1998.

Spiritually inclined, he joined the Ramakrishna Math as a renunciate. He was deeply influenced by the works and ideology of Swami Vivekananda, the chief disciple of 19th-century mystic, saint Ramakrishna Paramahansa. His initial name was Brahmachari BrahmaChaitanya. He was renamed Swami Vidyanathananda after receiving his ochre robe in 2008. Swami Vidyanathananda is a monk at the order's headquarters at Belur Math.

Prior to joining TIFR Mumbai, Mahan Maharaj was Professor of Mathematics and Dean of Research at the Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda University till 2015. He has widely published and presented his research in the area of hyperbolic manifolds and ending lamination spaces. His most notable work is the proof of the existence of Cannon–Thurston maps. This led to the resolution of the conjecture that connected limit sets of finitely generated Kleinian groups are locally connected. He is also the author of a book titled Maps on boundaries of hyperbolic metric spaces.

Mahan Maharaj is a recipient of the 2011 Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Mathematical Sciences. and the Infosys Prize 2015 for Mathematical Sciences. He was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2018 in Rio de Janeiro.