The synthetic geometry of hyperbolic space

Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - 13:00 to 14:00
Thackeray 427

Abstract or Additional Information

I will introduce the ball model of hyperbolic space and use this to prove some of its basic properties: identifying geodesics (i.e. distance-minimizing paths) and isometries, computing areas of triangles, etc.  The ultimate goal, which will certainly not be realized in this talk, is to prove the "Morse Lemma": that any quasi-geodesic ray fellow-travels a geodesic. This deep fact is a key consequence of the negative curvature of hyperbolic space.