In this work, we will introduce and study the notion of local randomness for compact metric groups. We prove a mixing inequality as well as a product result for locally random groups under an additional dimension condition on the volume of small balls and provide several examples of such groups. In particular, this leads to new examples of groups satisfying such a mixing inequality. In the same context, we will develop a Littlewood-Paley decomposition and explore its connection to the existence of the spectral gap for random walks. Moreover, under the dimension condition alone, we will prove a multi-scale entropy gain result `a la Bourgain-Gamburd and Tao.
A locally compact contraction group is a pair (G,f) where G is a locally compact group and f an automorphism of G which is contractive in the sense that the forward orbit under f of each g in G converges to the neutral element e, as n tends to infinity. We show that every surjective, continuous, equivariant homomorphism between locally compact contraction groups admits an equivariant continuous global section. As a consequence, extensions of locally compact contraction groups with abelian kernel can be described by continuous equivariant cohomology. For each prime number p, we use 2-cocycles t…
We prove that a group $G$ is locally finite if and only if every surjective real (or complex) linear cellular automaton with finite-dimensional alphabet over $G$ is injective.
We show that the topological rank of an orbit full group generated by an ergodic, probability measure-preserving free action of a non-discrete unimodular locally compact Polish group is two. For this, we use the existence of a cross section and show that for a locally compact Polish group, the full group generated by any dense subgroup is dense in the orbit full group of the action of the group. We prove that the orbit full group of a free action of a locally compact Polish group is extremely amenable if and only if the acting group is amenable, using the fact that the full group generates the…
In this note, we show that an uncountable locally free group, and therefore every locally free group, has a free subgroup whose cardinality is the same as that of $G$. This result directly improve the main result in [T. Nishinaka,"Group rings of countable non-abelian locally free groups are primitive", Int. J. algebra and computation, 21(3)(2011), 409-431] and establish the primitivity of group rings of locally free groups.
We study class $\mathcal S$ for locally compact groups. We characterize locally compact groups in this class as groups having an amenable action on a boundary that is small at infinity, generalizing a theorem of Ozawa. Using this characterization, we provide new examples of groups in class $\mathcal S$ and prove unique prime factorization results for group von Neumann algebras of products of locally compact groups in this class. We also prove that class $\mathcal S$ is a measure equivalence invariant.
Sacerdote [Sa] has shown that the non-Abelian free groups satisfy precisely the same universal-existential sentences Th(F$_2$)$\cap \forall \exists $ in a first-order language L$_o$ appropriate for group theory. It is shown that in every model of Th(F$_2$)$\cap \forall \exists $ the maximal Abelian subgroups are elementarily equivalent to locally cyclic groups (necessarily nontrivial and torsion free). Two classes of groups are interpolated between the non-Abelian locally free groups and Remeslennikov's $\exists $-free groups. These classes are the \textbf{almost locally free groups} and the \…
By the Thurston stability theorem, a group of C^1 orientation-preserving diffeomorphisms of the closed unit interval is locally indicable. We show that the local order structure of orbits gives a stronger criterion for nonsmoothability that can be used to produce new examples of locally indicable groups of homeomorphisms of the interval that are not conjugate to groups of C^1 diffeomorphisms.
It is well known that strongly minimal groups are commutative. Whether this is true for various generalisations of strong minimality has been asked in several different settings (see Hyttinen [2002], Maesono [2007], Pillay and Tanović [2011]). In this note we show that the answer is positive for groups with locally modular homogeneous pregeometries.
We describe the global structure of totally disconnected locally compact groups having a linear open compact subgroup. Among the applications, we show that if a non-discrete, compactly generated, topologically simple, totally disconnected locally compact group is locally linear, then it is a simple algebraic group over a local field.
We prove that each closed locally continuum- connected subspace of a finite dimensional topological group is locally compact. This allows us to construct many 1-dimensional metrizable separable spaces that are not homeomorphic to closed subsets of finite-dimensional topological groups, which answers in negative a question of D.Shakhmatov. Another corollary is a characterization of Lie groups as finite-dimensional locally continuum-connected topological groups. For locally path connected topological groups this characterization was proved by Gleason and Palais in 1957.
We define a class of spaces on which one may generalise the notion of compactness following motivating examples from higher-dimensional number theory. We establish analogues of several well-known topological results (such as Tychonoff's Theorem) for such spaces. We also discuss several possible applications of this framework, including the theory of harmonic analysis on non-locally compact groups.
We announce various results concerning the structure of compactly generated simple locally compact groups. We introduce a local invariant, called the structure lattice, which consists of commensurability classes of compact subgroups with open normaliser, and show that its properties reflect the global structure of the ambient group.
We show how a recent result of Hrushovsky implies that if an asymptotic cone of a finitely generated group is locally compact, then the group is virtually nilpotent.
Locally solid Riesz spaces have been widely investigated in the past several decades; but locally solid topological lattice-ordered groups seem to be largely unexplored. The paper is an attempt to initiate a relatively systematic study of locally solid topological lattice-ordered groups. We give both Robert-Namioka-type characterization and Fremlin-type characterization of locally solid topological lattice-ordered groups. In particular, we show that a group topology on a lattice-ordered group is locally solid if and only if it is generated by a family of translation-invariant lattice pseudomet…
We show that if a nontrivial group admits a locally invariant ordering, then it admits uncountably many locally invariant orderings. For the case of a left-orderable group, we provide an explicit construction of uncountable families of locally invariant orderings; for a general group we provide an existence theorem that applies compactness to yield uncountably many locally invariant orderings. Along the way, we define and investigate the space of locally invariant orderings of a group, the natural group actions on this space, and their relationship to the space of left-orderings.
A Polish group is said to be locally Roelcke precompact if there is a neighborhood of the identity element that is totally bounded in the Roelcke (or lower) group uniformity. These form a subclass of the locally bounded groups, while generalizing the Roelcke precompact and locally compact Polish groups. We characterize these groups in terms of their geometric structure as those locally bounded groups whose coarsely bounded sets are all Roelcke precompact, and in terms of their uniform structure as those groups whose completions in the Roelcke uniformity are locally compact. We also assess the …
A locally normal subgroup in a topological group is a subgroup whose normaliser is open. In this paper, we provide a detailed description of the large-scale structure of closed locally normal subgroups of complete Kac-Moody groups over finite fields. Combining that description with the main result from arXiv:2111.07066, we show that under mild assumptions, if the Kac-Moody group is one-ended (a property that is easily determined from the generalised Cartan matrix), then it is locally indecomposable, which means that no open subgroup decomposes as a nontrivial direct product.
We investigate the class of locally compact lacunary hyperbolic groups. We prove that if a locally compact compactly generated group G admits one asymptotic cone that is a real tree and whose natural transitive isometric action is focal, then G must be a focal hyperbolic group. As an application, we characterize connected Lie groups and linear algebraic groups over an ultrametric local field of characteristic zero having cut-points in one asymptotic cone. We prove several results for locally compact lacunary hyperbolic groups, and extend the characterization of finitely generated lacunary hype…
We consider groups of the form $G=AB$ with two locally cyclic subgroups $A$ and $B$. The structure of these groups is determined in the cases when $A$ and $B$ are both periodic or when one of them is periodic and the other is not. Together with a previous study of the case when $A$ and $B$ are torsion-free, this gives a complete classification of all groups that are the product of two locally cyclic groups. It is also shown that the product of a finite number of pairwise permutable periodic locally cyclic subgroups is a locally supersoluble group.
We study abstract group actions of locally compact Hausdorff groups on CAT(0) spaces. Under mild assumptions on the action we show that it is continuous or has a global fixed point. This mirrors results by Dudley and Morris-Nickolas for actions on trees. As a consequence we obtain a geometric proof for the fact that any abstract group homomorphism from a locally compact Hausdorff group into a torsion free CAT(0) group is continuous.
We prove that if $G$ is a group of automorphisms of a regular locally finite building which is closed in the compact-open topology and acts Weyl transitively on the building, then $G$ admits just one Hausdorff locally compact $σ$-compact topology compatible with the group operations.
We obtain a characterization of totally disconnected, locally compact groups $G$ with the following property: given a locally normal subgroup $K$ of $G$, then there is an open subgroup of $K$ that is a direct factor of an open subgroup of $G$. This property is motivated by J. Wilson's structure theory of just infinite groups, and indeed, when $G$ has trivial quasi-centre, the condition turns out to be equivalent to the condition that $G$ is locally isomorphic to a finite direct product of just infinite profinite groups. In the latter situation we obtain some global structural features of $G$, …
Wreath products of non-discrete locally compact groups are usually not locally compact groups, nor even topological groups. We introduce a natural extension of the wreath product construction to the setting of locally compact groups. As an application, we disprove a conjecture of Trofimov, constructing compactly generated locally compact groups of intermediate growth without nontrivial compact normal subgroups.
For a locally quasi-convex (lqc) abelian group $G$, we give the first description of all compatible group topologies on $G$ and apply this result to the Mackey group problem for lqc groups. We characterize lqc abelian groups which are Mackey groups or admit a Mackey group topology and provide a characterization of two Mackey groups whose product is Mackey. We obtain the first characterization of locally convex spaces which are Mackey groups.
In this note we show that if $G$ is a countably infinite abelian group such that $nG=0$ for some integer $n$, then the only locally minimal group topology on $G$ is the discrete one.
We survey aspects of locally nilpotent linear groups. Then we obtain a new classification; namely, we classify the irreducible maximal locally nilpotent subgroups of $\mathrm{GL}(q, \mathbb F)$ for prime $q$ and any field $\mathbb F$.
We show that every abstract homomorphism $φ$ from a locally compact group $L$ to a graph product $G_Γ$, endowed with the discrete topology, is either continuous or $φ(L)$ lies in a 'small' parabolic subgroup. In particular, every locally compact group topology on a graph product whose graph is not 'small' is discrete. This extends earlier work by Morris-Nickolas. We also show the following. If $L$ is a locally compact group and if $G$ is a discrete group which contains no infinite torsion group and no infinitely generated abelian group, then every abstract homomorphism $φ:L\to G$ is either con…
We study expressive power of continuous logic in classes of (locally compact) groups. We also describe locally compact groups which are separably categorical structures.
The supremum of lengths of strict chains of nested centralizers is called the $c$-dimension (centralizer dimension) of $G$. We prove two structure theorems for locally finite groups of finite $c$-dimension. We also prove that the $c$-dimension of the quotient of such a group by a locally soluble radical is bounded in terms of the $c$-dimension of the group itself.
Two non-discrete Hausdorff group topologies $τ, δ$ on a group $G$ are called {\it transversal} if the least upper bound $τ\vee δ$ of $τ$ and $δ$ is the discrete topology. In this paper, we discuss the existence of transversal group topologies on locally pseudocompact, locally precompact or locally compact groups. We prove that each locally pseudocompact, connected topological group satisfies CSP, which gives an affirmative answer to a problem posed by Dikranjan, Tkachenko and Yaschenko in 2006. For a compact normal subgroup $K$ of a locally compact totally disconnected group $G$, if $G$ admits…
Groups of almost upper triangular infinite matrices with entries indexed by integers are studied. It is shown that, when the matrices are over a finite field, these groups admit a nondiscrete totally disconnected, locally compact group topology and are topologically simple.
The class of those (torsion-free) $SI^*$-groups which are not locally soluble, has the cardinality of the continuum. Moreover, these groups are not only pairwise non-isomorphic, but also they generate pairwise different varieties of groups. Thus, the set of varieties generated by not locally soluble $SI^*$-groups is of the same cardinality as the set of all varieties of groups. It is possible to localize a variety of groups which contains all groups and varieties constructed. The examples constructed here continue the well known example of a not locally soluble $SI^*$-group built by Hall and b…
The authors have shown previously that every locally pro-p contraction group decomposes into the direct product of a p-adic analytic factor and a torsion factor. It has long been known that p-adic analytic contraction groups are nilpotent. We show here that the torsion factor is nilpotent too, and hence that every locally pro-p contraction group is nilpotent.
The class of locally compact near abelian groups is introduced and investigated as a class of metabelian groups formalizing and applying the concept of scalar multiplication. The structure of locally compact near abelian groups and its close connections to prime number theory are discussed and elucidated by graph theoretical tools. These investigations require a thorough reviewing and extension to present circumstances of various aspects of the general theory of locally compact groups such as -the Chabauty space of closed subgroups with its natural compact Hausdorff topology, -a very general S…
We show that every amenable group with a locally invariant partial order has a left-invariant total order (and is therefore locally indicable). We also show that if a group G admits a left-invariant total order, and H is a locally nilpotent subgroup of G, then a left-invariant total order on G can be chosen so that its restriction to H is both left-invariant and right-invariant. Both results follow from recurrence properties of the action of G on its binary relations.
We obtain a sufficient condition, given a totally disconnected, locally compact group $G$ with a topologically simple monolith $S$, to ensure that $S$ is open in $G$ and abstractly simple.
In 'The essentially chief series of a compactly generated locally compact group', an analogue of chief series for finite groups is discovered for compactly generated locally compact groups. In the present article, we show that chief factors necessarily exist in all locally compact groups with sufficiently rich topological structure. We also show that chief factors have one of seven types, and for all but one of these types, there is a decomposition into discrete groups, compact groups, and topologically simple groups. Our results for chief factors require exploring the theory developed in 'Chi…
We study a large class of amenable locally compact groups containing all solvable algebraic groups over a local field and their discrete subgroups. We show that the isoperimetric profile of these groups is in some sense optimal among amenable groups. We use this fact to compute the probability of return of symmetric random walks, and to derive various other geometric properties which are likely to be only satisfied by these groups.
A result due to M. Gromov states that any two finitely generated groups Γ and Λ are quasi-isometric if and only if they admit a topological coupling, i.e., a commuting pair of proper continuous cocompact actions $Γ\curvearrowright X\curvearrowleft Λ$ on a locally compact Hausdorff space. This result is extended here to all (compactly generated) locally compact second countable groups.
The class, denoted by $\mathscr{S}$, of totally disconnected locally compact groups which are non-discrete, compactly generated, and topologically simple contains many compelling examples. In recent years, a general theory for these groups, which studies the interaction between the compact open subgroups and the global structure, has emerged. In this article, we study the non-discrete totally disconnected locally compact groups $H$ that admit a continuous embedding with dense image into some $G\in \mathscr{S}$; that is, we consider the dense locally compact subgroups of groups $G\in \mathscr{S…
We introduce and explore a natural rank for totally disconnected locally compact groups called the bounded conjugacy rank. This rank is shown to be a lattice invariant for lattices in sigma compact totally disconnected locally compact groups; that is to say, for a given sigma compact totally disconnected locally compact group, some lattice has bounded conjugacy rank n if and only if every lattice has bounded conjugacy rank n. Several examples are then presented.
The c-dimension of a group G is the maximal length of a chain of nested centralizers in G. We prove that a locally finite group of finite c-dimension k has less than 5k nonabelian composition factors.
In the last years, there has been a large amount of research on embeddability properties of finitely generated hyperbolic groups. In this paper, we elaborate on the more general class of locally compact hyperbolic groups. We compute the equivariant $L_p$-compression in a number of locally compact examples, such as the groups $SO(n,1)$: by proving that the equivariant $L_p$-compression of a locally compact compactly generated group is minimal for $p=2$, we calculate all equivariant $L_p$-compressions of $SO(n,1)$. Next, we show that although there are locally compact, non-discrete hyperbolic gr…
For any odd prime $p$, we give an example of a locally finite $p$-group $G$ containing a left 3-Engel element $x$ where $\langle x \rangle^G$ is not nilpotent.
Many non-locally compact second countable groups admit a comeagre conjugacy class. For example, this is the case for the automorphism group of the rational order and the automorphism group of the random graph [Truss]. A. Kechris and C. Rosendal ask if a non-trivial locally compact second countable group can admit a comeagre conjugacy class. We answer the question in the negative via an analysis of locally compact second countable groups with topological conditions on a conjugacy class.
We observe a correspondence between collections of closed subgroups and normal subgroups in totally disconnected locally compact groups. This correspondence is applied to prove structure theorems for two classes of totally disconnected locally compact second countable groups: the class of such groups with an open solvable subgroup and the class of such groups with a pro-nilpotent compact open subgroup. As a second application, we give new proofs and generalizations of results of G. Willis and Y. Barnea, M. Ershov, and T. Weigel on totally disconnected locally compact groups which are topologic…
Let m, n be positive integers, v a multilinear commutator word and w = v^m. We prove that if G is a locally graded group in which all w-values are n-Engel, then the verbal subgroup w(G) is locally nilpotent.
We describe locally compact groups which are separably categorical metric structures. The paper extends (and corrects) Section 3 of the paper A.Ivanov, "Locally compact groups and continuous logic", arXiv: 1206.5473
