We prove that, for any positive integer $c$, the quotient group $γ_{c}(M_{3})/γ_{c+1}(M_{3})$ of the lower central series of the McCool group $M_{3}$ is isomorphic to two copies of the quotient group $γ_{c}(F_{3})/γ_{c+1}(F_{3})$ of the lower central series of a free group $F_{3}$ of rank $3$ as $\mathbb{Z}$-modules. Furthermore, we give a necessary and sufficient condition whether the associated graded Lie algebra ${\rm gr}(M_{3})$ of $M_3$ is naturally embedded into the Johnson Lie algebra ${\cal L}({\rm IA}(F_{3}))$ of the IA-automorphisms of $F_{3}$.
We study subgroups and quotients of outer automorphism groups of right-angled Artin groups (RAAGs). We prove that for all RAAGS, the outer automorphism group is residually finite and, for a large class of RAAGs, it satisfies the Tits alternative. We also investigate which of these automorphism groups contain non-abelian solvable subgroups.
Let $P(\mathrm{sl}_2(K))$ be the Poisson enveloping algebra of the Lie algebra $\mathrm{sl}_2(K)$ over an algebraically closed field $K$ of characteristic zero. The quotient algebras $ $ $P(\mathrm{sl}_2(K))/(C_P-λ)$, where $C_P$ is the standard Casimir element of $\mathrm{sl}_2(K)$ in $P(\mathrm{sl}_2(K))$ and $0\neq λ\in K$, are proven to be simple in \cite{UZh}. Using a result by L. Makar-Limanov \cite{ML90}, we describe generators of the automorphism group of $P(\mathrm{sl}_2(K))/(C_P-λ)$ and represent this group as an amalgamated product of its subgroups. Moreover, using similar results b…
Given a finitely presented group $G$, we wish to explore the conditions under which automorphisms of quotients $G/N$ can be lifted to automorphisms of $G$. We discover that in the case where $N$ is a central subgroup of $G$, the question of lifting can be reduced to solving a certain matrix equation. We then use the techniques developed to show that $Inn(G)$ is not characteristic in $Aut(G)$, where $G$ is a metacyclic group of order $p^n$, $p\neq 2$.
We give an new, elementary proof of the result that the smallest non-cyclic quotients of automorphism group of free group is the linear group over the field of two elements, and moreover all minimal quotients are obtained by the standard projection composed with an automorphism of the image. This result, originally due to Baumeister-Kielak-Pierro, proves a conjecture of Mecchia-Zimmermann.
We show that for a large class $\mathcal{W}$ of Coxeter groups the following holds: Given a group $W_Γ$ in $\mathcal{W}$, the automorphism group ${\rm Aut}(W_Γ)$ virtually surjects onto some infinite Coxeter group. In particular, the group ${\rm Aut}(W_Γ)$ is virtually indicable and therefore does not have Kazhdan's property (T).
In this paper we study the quotient and "blow-up" of graph-of-groups $\cal{G}$ and of their automorphisms $H: \cal{G} \rightarrow \cal{G}$. We show that the existence of such a "blow-up" of $\bar{H}: \bar{\cal{G}} \rightarrow \bar{\cal{G}}$ relative to a given family of "local" graph-of-groups isomorphisms $H_{i}: \cal{G}_{i} \rightarrow \cal{G}_{i}$ depends crucially on the $H_{i}$-conjugacy class of the correction term $δ(\bar{E}_{i})$ for any edge $\bar{E}_{i}$ of $\bar{\cal{G}}$, where $H$-congjugacy is a new but natural concept introduced here. As an application we obtain a criterion as t…
We prove that, for n=3 and 4, the minimal nonabelian finite factor group of the outer automorphism group Out F_n of a free group of rank n is the linear group PSL_n(Z_2) (conjecturally, this may remain true for arbitrary rank n > 2). We also discuss some computational results on low index subgroups of Aut F_n and Out F_n, for n = 3 and 4, using presentations of these groups.
It was previously shown by Grunewald and Lubotzky that the automorphism group of a free group, $\text{Aut}(F_n)$, has a large collection of virtual arithmetic quotients. Analogous results were proved for the mapping class group by Looijenga and by Grunewald, Larsen, Lubotzky, and Malestein. In this paper, we prove analogous results for the automorphism group of a right-angled Artin group for a large collection of defining graphs. As a corollary of our methods we produce new virtual arithmetic quotients of $\text{Aut}(F_n)$ for $n \geq 4$ where $k$th powers of all transvections act trivially fo…
We show that the outer automorphism groups of graph products of finitely generated abelian groups satisfy the Tits alternative, are residually finite, their so-called Torelli subgroups are finitely generated, and they satisfy a dichotomy between being virtually nilpotent and containing a non-abelian free subgroup that is determined by a graphical condition on the underlying labelled graph. Graph products of finitely generated abelian groups simultaneously generalize right-angled Artin groups (RAAGs) and right-angled Coxter groups (RACGs), providing a common framework for studying these groups.…
Kostant constructed a section from the adjoint quotient morphism of a simple Lie algebra to the open set of regular elements, and Steinberg constructed such a section for the adjoint quotient of a simply connected and simple algebraic group. In this paper, we show that all sections of the adjoint quotient are conjugate via a morphism from the adjoint quotient to the group. In particular, the sections constructed via the parabolic construction are conjugate either to the Kostant section or to the Steinberg section. The method of proof consists in studying automorphism sheaves of certain princip…
First, we study a descending filtration of the ring of Fricke characters of a free group consisting of ideals on which the automorphism group of a free group acts. Then using it, we define a descending filtration of the IA-automorphism group of a free group, and investigate a relation between it and the Andreadakis-Johnson filtration.
Let $V$ be a $G$-module where $G$ is a complex reductive group. Let $Z:=\quot VG$ denote the categorical quotient and let $π\colon V\to Z$ be the morphism dual to the inclusion $Ø(V)^G\subsetØ(V)$. Let $ϕ\colon Z\to Z$ be an algebraic automorphism. Then one can ask if there is an algebraic map $Φ\colon V\to V$ which lifts $ϕ$, i.e., $π(Φ(v))=ϕ(π(v))$ for all $v\in V$. In \cite{Kuttler} the case is treated where $V=r\lieg$ is a multiple of the adjoint representation of $G$. It is shown that, for $r$ sufficiently large (often $r\geq 2$ will do), any $ϕ$ has a lift. We consider the case of genera…
For a positive integer $n$, with $n \geq 2$, let $M_n$ be a free metabelian group of rank $n$. For $c \in \mathbb{N}$, let $γ_c(M_n)$ be the $c$-th term of the lower central series of $M_n$. For $c \geq 2$, let ${\rm I}_{c}{\rm A}(M_n)$ be the subgroup of ${\rm Aut}(M_{n})$ consisting of all automorphisms inducing the identity mapping on $M_n/γ_c(M_n)$. In this paper, we study the quotient groups ${\cal L}^{c}({\rm IA}(M_{n})) = {\rm I}_{c}{\rm A}(M_n)/{\rm I}_{c+1}{\rm A}(M_n)$ for all $n$ and $c$. For $c \geq 2$, we show $γ_{c}({\rm IA}(M_{2})) = {\rm I}_{c+1}{\rm A}(M_{2}))$. For $n = 3$, w…
Let $\mathfrak g_i$ be a simple complex Lie algebra, $1\leq i \leq d$, and let $G=G_1\times...\times G_d$ be the corresponding adjoint group. Consider the $G$-module $V=\oplus r_i\mathfrak g_i$ where $r_i\geq 1$ for all $i$. We say that $V$ is \emph{large} if all $r_i\geq 2$ and $r_i\geq 3$ if $G_i$ has rank 1. In [Schwarz12] we showed that when $V$ is large any algebraic automorphism $ψ$ of the quotient $Z:= V//G$ lifts to an algebraic mapping $Ψ\colon V\to V$ which sends the fiber over $z$ to the fiber over $ψ(z)$, $z\in Z$. (Most cases were already handled in [Kuttler11]). We also showed th…
The concepts of the scale and tidy subgroups for an automorphism of a totally disconnected locally compact group were defined in seminal work by George A. Willis in the 1990s, and recently generalized to the case of endomorphisms (G. A. Willis, Math. Ann. 361 (2015), 403--442). We show that central facts concerning the scale, tidy subgroups, quotients, and contraction groups of automorphisms extend to the case of endomorphisms. In particular, we obtain results concerning the domain of attraction around an invariant closed subgroup.
A p-group G is p-central if the central quotient has exponent p. We prove that for a subset of finite p-central p-groups, the order of the group G divides the order of Aut(G).
The paper is intended to be a survey on some topics within the framework of automorphisms of a relatively free groups of infinite rank. We discuss such properties as tameness, primitivity, small index, Bergman property, and so on.
In this paper, we consider certain descending filtrations of the $\mathrm{SL}(m,\C)$-representation algebras of free groups and free abelian groups. By using it, we introduce analogs of the Johnson homomorphisms of the automorphism groups of free groups. We show that the first homomorphisms are extended to the automorphism groups of free groups as crossed homomorphisms. Furthermore we show that the extended crossed homomorphisms induce Kawazumi's cocycles and Morita's cocycles. This works are generalization of our previous results for the $\mathrm{SL}(2,\C)$-representation algebras.
We show that in the free group of rank 3, given an arbitrary number of automorphisms, the intersection of their fixed subgroups is equal to the fixed subgroup of some other single automorphism.
If f is a nontrivial automorphism of a thick building Delta of purely infinite type, we prove that there is no bound on the distance that f moves a chamber. This has the following group-theoretic consequence: If G is a group of automorphisms of Delta with bounded quotient, then the center of G is trivial.
We give an upper bound for the number of ``overlattices'' in the automorphism group of a tree, containing a fixed lattice with index n. For an example of a lattice in the automorphism group of a 2p-regular tree whose quotient is a loop, we obtain a lower bound of the asymptotic behavior as well.
We say a group $G$ has property $R_\infty$ if the number $R(φ)$ of twisted conjugacy classes is infinite for every automorphism $φ$ of $G$. For such groups, the $R_\infty$-nilpotency degree is the least integer $c$ such that $G/γ_{c+1}(G)$ has property $R_\infty$. In this work, we compute the $R_\infty$-nilpotency degree of all Generalized Solvable Baumslag-Solitar groups $Γ_n$. Moreover, we compute the lower central series of $Γ_n$, write the nilpotent quotients $Γ_{n,c}=Γ_n/γ_{c+1}(Γ_n)$ as semidirect products of finitely generated abelian groups and classify which integer invertible matrice…
We exhibit normal subgroups of a free nilpotent group F of rank two and class three, which have isomorphic finite quotients but are not conjugate under any automorphism of F.
The JSJ decomposition encodes the automorphisms and the virtually cyclic splittings of a hyperbolic group. For general finitely presented groups, the JSJ decomposition encodes only their splittings. In this sequence of papers we study the automorphisms of a hierarchically hyperbolic group that satisfies some weak acylindricity conditions. To study these automorphisms we construct an object that can be viewed as a higher rank JSJ decomposition. In the first paper we demonstrate our construction in the case of a right angled Artin group. For studying automorphisms of a general HHG we construct w…
We classify a large class of small groups of finite Morley rank: $N_\circ^\circ$-groups which are the infinite analogues of Thompson's $N$-groups. More precisely, we constrain the $2$-structure of groups of finite Morley rank containing a definable, normal, non-soluble, $N_\circ^\circ$-subgroup.
We study the word length entropy of automorphisms of residually nilpotent groups, and how the entropy of such group automorphisms relates to the entropy of induced automorphisms on various nilpotent quotients. We show that much like the structure of a nilpotent group is dictated to a large degree by its abelianization, the entropy of an automorphism of a nilpotent group is dictated by its entropy on the abelianization. We give some applications to the study of pseudo-Anosov homeomorphisms of surfaces. In particular, we show that if $ψ$ is a non--homological pseudo-Anosov homeomorphism of a sur…
We improve a result of Prokhorov and Shramov on the rank of finite $p$-subgroups of the birational automorphism group of a rationally connected variety. Known examples show that they are sharp in many cases.
We prove that the smallest non-trivial quotients of the commutator subgroups of the braid groups are the alternating groups, proving a conjecture of Chudnovsky-Kordek-Li-Partin. Furthermore, we show that any minimal quotient map is the standard projection, composed with an automorphism of the alternating group.
Let $ϕ$ be an automorphism of a free group $F_n$ of rank $n$, and let $M_ϕ=F_n \rtimes_ϕ \mathbb{Z}$ be the corresponding mapping torus of $ϕ$. We study the group $Out(M_ϕ)$ under certain technical conditions on $ϕ$. Moreover, in the case of rank 2, we classify the cases when this group is finite or virtually cyclic, depending on the conjugacy class of the image of $ϕ$ in $GL_2(\mathbb{Z})$.
We prove that the automorphism group of the braid group on four strands acts faithfully and geometrically on a CAT(0) 2-complex. This implies that the automorphism group of the free group of rank two acts faithfully and geometrically on a CAT(0) 2-complex, in contrast to the situation for rank three and above.
We offer a criterion for showing that the automorphism group of an ultrahomogeneous structure is topologically 2-generated and even has a cyclically dense conjugacy class. We then show how finite topological rank of the automorphism group of an $ω$-categorical structure can go down to reducts. Together, those results prove that a large number of $ω$-categorical structures that appear in the literature have an automorphism group of finite topological rank. In fact, we are not aware of any $ω$-categorical structure to which they do not apply (assuming the automorphism group has no compact quotie…
A survey article that presents some recent algebraic and model-theoretic results on the automorphism groups of relatively free groups of infinite rank. The topics include topological aspects, generating sets, descripition of automorpisms and expressive power of the first-order theories.
The group of isometries W of a regular rooted tree, and many of its subgroups with branching structure, have groups of automorphisms induced by conjugation in W. This fact has stimulated the computation of the group of automorphisms of such well-known examples as the group G studied by R. Grigorchuk, and the group H studied by N. Gupta and the second author. In this paper, we pursue the larger theme of towers of automorphisms of groups of tree isometries such as G and H. We describe this tower for all groups acting on the binary rooted tree which decompose as infinitely iterated wreath product…
We construct an example of an IA-automorphism of the free metabelian group of rank $n\geq 3$ without nontrivial fixed points. That gives a negative answer to the question raised by Shpilrain. By a result of Bachmuth \cite{Ba1}, such an automorphism does not exist if the rank is equal to 2.
We show that for any Polish group $G$ and any countable normal subgroup $Γ\triangleleft G$, the coset equivalence relation $G/Γ$ is a hyperfinite Borel equivalence relation. In particular, the outer automorphism group of any countable group is hyperfinite.
In positive characteristic, algebraic curves can have many more automorphisms than expected from the classical Hurwitz's bound. There even exist algebraic curves of arbitrary high genus g with more than 16g^4 automorphisms. It has been observed on many occasions that the most anomalous examples invariably have zero p-rank. In this paper, the K-automorphism group Aut(X) of a zero 2-rank algebraic curve X defined over an algebraically closed field K of characteristic 2 is investigated. The main result is that if the curve has genus g greater than or equal to 2, and |Aut(X)|>24g^2, then Aut(X) ha…
This note uses some recent calculations of Conder and Bujalance (on classifying finite index group extensions of Fuchsian groups with abelian quotient and torsion free kernel) in order to determine the full automorphism groups of some cylic coverings of the line (including curves of Fermat and Lefschetz type). The answer is complete for cyclic covers that branch over three points.
A group $G$ has the $R_{\infty}$--property if the number $R(φ)$ of twisted conjugacy classes is infinite for any automorphism $φ$ of $G$. For such a group $G$, the $R_{\infty}$--nilpotency index is the least integer $c$ such that $G/γ_{c+1}(G)$ still has the $R_\infty$--property. In this paper, we determine the $R_{\infty}$--nilpotency degree of all Baumslag--Solitar groups.
Let $F_n$ be the free group on $n\ge 2$ elements and $\A(F_n)$ its group of automorphisms. In this paper we present a rich collection of linear representations of $\A(F_n)$ arising through the action of finite index subgroups of it on relation modules of finite quotient groups of $F_n$. We show (under certain conditions) that the images of our representations are arithmetic groups.
The regular objects in various categories, such as maps, hypermaps or covering spaces, can be identified with the normal subgroups N of a given group Γ, with quotient group isomorphic to Γ/N. It is shown how to enumerate such objects with a given finite automorphism group G, how to represent them all as quotients of a single regular object U(G), and how they are acted on by the outer automorphism group of Γ. Examples constructed include kaleidoscopic maps with trinity symmetry.
For each prime power $q\geq 5$, we construct a rank four chiral polytope that has a group $PSL(3,q)$ as automorphism group and Schläfli type $\{q-1,\frac{2(q-1)}{(3,q-1)},q-1\}$. We also construct rank five polytopes for some values of $q$ and we show that there is no chiral polytope of rank at least six having a group $PSL(3,q)$ or $PSU(3,q)$ as automorphism group.
If $p$ is prime, a compact Riemann surface $X$ of genus $g\geq 2$ is called cyclic $p$-gonal if it admits a cyclic group of automorphisms $C_{p}$ of order $p$ such that the quotient space $X/C_{p}$ has genus 0. If in addition $C_{p}$ is not normal in the full automorphism $G$, then we call $G$ a non-normal cyclic $p$-gonal group. In the following we classify all non-normal $p$-gonal groups.
The minimal degree of a permutation group $G$ is the minimum number of points not fixed by non-identity elements of $G$. Lower bounds on the minimal degree have strong structural consequences on $G$. Babai conjectured that if a primitive coherent configuration with $n$ vertices is not a Cameron scheme, then its automorphism group has minimal degree $\geq cn$ for some constant $c>0$. In 2014, Babai proved the desired lower bound on the minimal degree of the automorphism groups of strongly regular graphs, thus confirming the conjecture for primitive coherent configurations of rank 3. In this pap…
