Combinatorial and Geometric Group Theory: Dortmund and Ottawa-Montreal conferences

We are pleased to present the book “Geometric Group Theory, Dortmund and Carleton Conferences”, a selection of the best research articles from two strongly related 2007 international conferences:
“Combinatorial and Geometric Group Theory with Applications” (GAGTA),the University of Dortmund (Germany) from August 27th to 31st;
“Fields Workshop in Asymptotic Group Theory and Cryptography”, Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada) from December 14th to 16th, followed by “Workshop on Actions on Trees, Non-Archimedian Words, and Asymptotic
Cones”, Saint Sauveur (Montreal) from December 17th to 21st.
The book contains a selection of refereed papers on Combinatorial and Geomet- ric Group Theory. The breadth of topics included will assure the interest of all specialists and researchers in this area of mathematics; they will also prove to be valuable to graduate students and mathematicians in other areas who wish to explore deeper into this exciting and very active field of research.
The articles largely fall into five categories:
• equations and algebraic geometry over groups; Tarski problems,
• algorithmic problems in groups,
• groups of automorphisms of non-abelian free groups,
• groups of transformations of the unit interval and Thompson’s group F,
• questions motivated by group-based cryptography