Abstract: Pick your favorite compact space. How short is the shortest closed loop on it? Now look at your favorite cover of this space. Did that loop unwrap to a longer loop? These are systole questions. The systole of a manifold is the minimal length of a non-contractible closed loop. Systoles in arithmetic manifolds have many fascinating relationships with deep problems in number theory, such as Lehmer's Mahler measure problem. In recent years, there have been numerous papers studying systoles, their bounds, and their growth up covers as you vary the underlying manifolds. In this talk, I will discuss interesting systole problems, survey known results, and present recent work with collaborators Sara Lapan and Benjamin Linowitz.
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