nLab Thompson group

Idea

In the 1960s R. Thompson introduced three finitely presented groups with some remarkable properties that are today called Thompson groups and differentiated by prefixing the letters F, T, and V. The property of resurfacing in different guises in apparently unrelated mathematical fields earned them the nickname Chameleon groups.

Related pages

• Jónsson-Tarski algebra

• Jónsson-Tarski topos

• Higman's embedding theorem

References

• Wikipedia entry: Thompson groups.

• n-café blog: T. Leinster - F and the Shibboleth, January 2010.

The following has links to a lot of interesting material on the Thompson groups among them scans of handwritten notes by Thompson:

• M. Brin’s Reading list on the Thompson groups.

• M. Brin, Higher dimensional Thompson groups , Geom. Ded. 108 no.1 (2004) pp.163-192. (preprint)

• Marcelo Fiore, Tom Leinster, An abstract characterization of Thompson’s group F , arXiv.math/0508617 (2010). (pdf)

The following brings out connections between monoidal categories and the higher dimensional Thompson groups:

• J. A. Cohen, Coherence for rewriting 2-theories, Phd. Macquarie University 2008. (arxiv:0904.0125v1)