Title: Lehmer's number and the Golden Mean
Speaker: Eriko Hironaka
Abstract: In this talk we relate the minimization problem for dilatations of pseudo-Anosov mapping classes to Lehmer's problem for Mahler measures of algebraic integers. We show that a related invariant to Mahler measure may be minimized by the golden mean rather than Lehmer's number, and exhibit a topological example that shows how the golden mean and Lehmer's number are natural cousins.