William Chong (McGill University)

Title: Small cancellation theory and word problems

Abstract: We will introduce the small cancellation theory, which is a convenient tool to generate examples. We first examine the essence of the proof about the word problem for the fundamental group of the orientable surface of genus 2. We then define a metric small cancellation condition and sketch a proof for the associated word problems with disk diagrams. Finally, we state other related small cancellation conditions and explore some of their applications.