Abstract:

A 2005 paper by Kechris, Pestov, and Todorcevic connects the topological dynamics of automorphism groups with a combinatorial principle called the Ramsey property. This talk will give a gentle introduction to KPT theory, with the goal of proving from start to finish that Aut(Q), the group of order-preserving bijections of the rationals equipped with the pointwise convergence topology, is extremely amenable.