Title: Surface subgroups and hyperbolic 3-manifolds

Speaker: Vivien Easson (Cambridge)

Abstract: The algebraic properties of fundamental groups of 3-manifolds carry a lot of information about the topological or geometrical properties of their associated manifolds. One such property is whether the group contains a subgroup which is isomorphic to the fundamental group of a closed surface. I will discuss related issues and explain when surface subgroups are known to exist, and compare this with when they are expected to exist.