Given a periodic quotient of a torsion-free hyperbolic group, we provide a fine lower estimate of the growth function of any sub-semi-group. This generalizes results of Razborov and Safin for free groups.
We prove that an outer automorphism of the free group is exponentially growing if and only if it induces an outer automorphism of infinite order of free Burnside groups with sufficiently large odd exponent.
The RP-property of Fel'shtyn and Troitsky is proved for wreath products of finitely generated Abelian groups with the group of integers. Such wreath products become the first known example of finitely generated RP-groups being not almost polycyclic.
We show that free Burnside groups of sufficiently large odd exponent are non--amenable in a certain strong sense, more precisely, their left regular representations are isolated from the trivial representation uniformly on finite generating sets. This result is applied to the solution of a strong version of the von Neumann -- Day problem concerning amenability of groups without non--abelian free subgroups. As another consequence, we obtain that the above--mentioned groups are of uniform exponential growth.
We prove surjectivity of certain word maps on finite non-abelian simple groups. More precisely, we prove the following: if N is a product of two prime powers, then the word map sending (x,y) to the product of the Nth powers of x and y is surjective on every finite non-abelian simple group; If is an odd integer, then the word map sending the triple (x,y,z) to the product of the Nth powers is surjective on every finite quasisimple group. These generalize classical theorems of Burnside and Feit-Thompson. We also prove asymptotic results about the surjectivity of the word map sending (x,y) to the …
We construct finitely generated groups of small period growth, i.e. groups where the maximum order of an element of word length $n$ grows very slowly in $n$. This answers a question of Bradford related to the lawlessness growth of groups and is connected to an approximative version of the restricted Burnside problem.
We describe a new class of groups of Burnside type, giving a procedure transforming an arbitrary non-free minimal action of the dihedral group on a Cantor set into an orbit-equivalent action of an infinite finitely generated periodic group. We show that if the associated Schreier graphs are linearly repetitive, then the group is of intermediate growth. In particular, this gives first examples of simple groups of intermediate growth.
We develop a version of small cancellation theory in the variety of Burnside groups. More precisely, we show that there exists a critical exponent $n_0$ such that for every odd integer $n\geq n_0$, the well-known classical $C'(1/6)$-small cancellation theory, as well as its graphical generalization and its version for free products, produce examples of infinite $n$-periodic groups. Our result gives a powerful tool for producing (uncountable collections of) examples of $n$-periodic groups with prescribed properties. It can be applied without any prior knowledge in the subject of $n$-periodic gr…
For a wide class of groups including polycyclic and finitely generated polynomial growth groups it is proved that the Reidemeister number of an automorphism f is equal to the number of finite-dimensional fixed points of the induced map f^ on the unitary dual, if one of these numbers is finite. This theorem is a natural generalization of the classical Burnside-Frobenius theorem to infinite groups. This theorem also has important consequences in topological dynamics and in some sense is a reply to a remark of J.-P. Serre. The main technical results proved in the paper yield a tool for a further …
We prove that the restricted wreath product ${\mathbb{Z}_n \mathbin{\mathrm{wr}} \mathbb{Z}^k}$ has the $R_\infty$-property, i. e. every its automorphism $φ$ has infinite Reidemeister number $R(φ)$, in exactly two cases: (1) for any $k$ and even $n$; (2) for odd $k$ and $n$ divisible by 3. In the remaining cases there are automorphisms with finite Reidemeister number, for which we prove the finite-dimensional twisted Burnside--Frobenius theorem (TBFT): $R(φ)$ is equal to the number of equivalence classes of finite-dimensional irreducible unitary representations fixed by the action ${[ρ]\mapsto…
We describe the essential algebra, $\widehat{kB_T}(G)$, of the Burnside biset functor shifted by a group $T$, at a group $G$, in two cases. First, when $G$ and $T$ are both finite abelian groups and $k$ is a field of characteristic $0$. In this case, $\widehat{kB_T}(G)$ is isomorphic to a quotient of the shifted star algebra, which is defined in terms of the subgroups of $G\times G\times T$. The second case is when $G$ and $T$ are any finite groups satisfying $(|G|, |T|)=1$ and $k$ is a commutative unitary ring. In this case, $\widehat{kB_T}(G)$ is isomorphic to a semidirect product of $Out(G)…
For a finite group $G$, we define a ghost ring and a mark homomorphism for the double Burnside ring of left-free $(G,G)$-bisets. In analogy to the case of the Burnside ring $B(G)$, the ghost ring has a much simpler ring structure, and after tensoring with $\QQ$ one obtains an isomorphism of $\QQ$-algebras. As an application of a key lemma, we obtain a very general formula for the Brauer construction applied to a tensor product of two $p$-permutation bimodules $M$ and $N$ in terms of Brauer constructions of the bimodules $M$ and $N$. Over a field of characteristic 0 we determine the simple modu…
For a finite group $G$, we introduce a multiplication on the $\QQ$-vector space with basis $\scrS_{G\times G}$, the set of subgroups of $G\times G$. The resulting $\QQ$-algebra $\Atilde$ can be considered as a ghost algebra for the double Burnside ring $B(G,G)$ in the sense that the mark homomorphism from $B(G,G)$ to $\Atilde$ is a ring homomorphism. Our approach interprets $\QQ B(G,G)$ as an algebra $eAe$, where $A$ is a twisted monoid algebra and $e$ is an idempotent in $A$. The monoid underlying the algebra $A$ is again equal to $\scrS_{G\times G}$ with multiplication given by composition o…
A locally compact group G is said to be Hermitian if every selfadjoint element of L^1(G) has real spectrum. Using Halmos' notion of capacity in Banach algebras and a result of Jenkins, Fountain, Ramsay and Williamson we will put a bound on the growth of Hermitian groups. In other words, we will show that if G has a subset that grows faster than a certain constant, then G cannot be Hermitian. Our result allows us to give new examples of non-Hermitian groups which could not tackled by the existing theory. The examples include certain infinite free Burnside groups, automorphism groups of trees, a…
We present a method for computing the table of marks of a direct product of finite groups. In contrast to the character table of a direct product of two finite groups, its table of marks is not simply the Kronecker product of the tables of marks of the two groups. Based on a decomposition of the inclusion order on the subgroup lattice of a direct product as a relation product of three smaller partial orders, we describe the table of marks of the direct product essentially as a matrix product of three class incidence matrices. Each of these matrices is in turn described as a sparse block diagon…
Nontrivial pairs of zero-divisors in group rings are introduced and discussed. A problem on the existence of nontrivial pairs of zero-divisors in group rings of free Burnside groups of odd exponent $n \gg 1$ is solved in the affirmative. Nontrivial pairs of zero-divisors are also found in group rings of free products of groups with torsion.
Let R be a (unital) commutative ring, and G be a finite group with order invertible in R. We introduce new idempotents in the double Burnside algebra RB(G,G), indexed by conjugacy classes of minimal sections of G, i.e. pairs (T,S) of subgroups of G, where S is a normal subgroup of T contained in the Frattini subgroup of T. These idempotents are orthogonal, and their sum is equal to the identity. It follows that for any biset functor F over R, the evaluation F (G) splits as a direct sum of specific R-modules indexed by minimal sections of G, up to conjugation. The restriction of these construct…
We study a coarse homology theory with prescribed growth conditions. For a finitely generated group G with the word length metric this homology theory turns out to be related to amenability of G. We characterize vanishing of a certain fundamental class in our homology in terms of an isoperimetric inequality on G and show that on any group at most linear control is needed for this class to vanish. The latter is a homological version of the classical Burnside problem for infinite groups, with a positive solution. As applications we characterize existence of primitives of the volume form with pre…
These are introductory notes on word growth of groups, and include a gentle presentation of wreath products as well as recent results on construction of groups of with given growth function. They are are an expanded version of a mini-course given at "Le Louverain", June 24-27, 2014.
We prove that there is a gap between $\sqrt{2}$ and $(1+\sqrt{5})/2$ for the exponential growth rate of free products $G=A*B$ not isomorphic to the infinite dihedral group. For amalgamated products $G=A*_C B$ with $([A:C]-1)([B:C]-1)\geq2$, we show that lower exponential growth rate than $\sqrt{2}$ can be achieved by proving that the exponential growth rate of the amalgamated product $\mathrm{PGL}(2,\mathbb{Z})\cong (C_2\times C_2) *_{C_2} D_6$ is equal to the unique positive root of the polynomial $z^3-z-1$. This answers two questions by Avinoam Mann [The growth of free products, Journal of A…
A group action on a metric space is called growth tight if the exponential growth rate of the group with respect to the induced pseudo-metric is strictly greater than that of its quotients. A prototypical example is the action of a free group on its Cayley graph with respect to a free generating set. More generally, with Arzhantseva we have shown that group actions with strongly contracting elements are growth tight. Examples of non-growth tight actions are product groups acting on the $L^1$ products of Cayley graphs of the factors. In this paper we consider actions of product groups on produc…
In this paper we consider groups of the form $G\wr L$, where the set of generators naturally extends the sets of generators of $G$ and $L$, and $L$ admits a Cayley graph that is a tree. We show how one can compute the conjugacy growth series of such groups in terms of the standard and conjugacy growth series of $G$. We then provide explicit formulas for groups of the form $G\wr \mathbb{Z}$ and $G\wr (C_2*C_2)$. We also prove that the radius of convergence of the conjugacy growth series of $G\wr L$, for any $G$ and $L$ as above, is the same as the radius of convergence of its standard growth se…
Generalising results of Razborov and Safin, and answering a question of Button, we prove that for every hyperbolic group there exists a constant $α>0$ such that for every finite subset $U$ that is not contained in a virtually cyclic subgroup $|U^n|\geqslant (α|U|)^{[(n+1)/2]}$. Similar estimates are established for groups acting acylindrically on trees or hyperbolic spaces.
In this paper we introduce the geodesic conjugacy language and geodesic conjugacy growth series for a finitely generated group. We study the effects of various group constructions on rationality of both the geodesic conjugacy growth series and spherical conjugacy growth series, as well as on regularity of the geodesic conjugacy language and spherical conjugacy language. In particular, we show that regularity of the geodesic conjugacy language is preserved by the graph product construction, and rationality of the geodesic conjugacy growth series is preserved by both direct and free products.
Let $G$ be an infinite group and let $X$ be a finite generating set for $G$ such that the growth series of $G$ with respect to $X$ is a rational function; in this case $G$ is said to have rational growth with respect to $X$. In this paper a result on sizes of spheres (or balls) in the Cayley graph $Γ(G,X)$ is obtained: namely, the size of the sphere of radius $n$ is bounded above and below by positive constant multiples of $n^αλ^n$ for some integer $α\geq 0$ and some $λ\geq 1$. As an application of this result, a calculation of degree of commutativity (d. c.) is provided: for a finite group $F…
We give a description of non-growing subsets in linear groups, which extends the Product theorem for simple groups of Lie type. We also give an account of various related aspects of growth in linear groups.
In this paper we give a recursive formula for the conjugacy growth series of a graph product in terms of the conjugacy growth and standard growth series of subgraph products. We also show that the conjugacy and standard growth rates in a graph product are equal provided that this property holds for each vertex group. All results are obtained for the standard generating set consisting of the union of generating sets of the vertex groups.
We prove the exponential growth of product replacement graphs for a large class of groups. Much of our effort is dedicated to the study of product replacement graphs of Grigorchuk groups, where the problem is most difficult.
The deep theory of approximate subgroups establishes 3-step product growth for subsets of finite simple groups $G$ of Lie type of bounded rank. In this paper we obtain 2-step growth results for representations of such groups $G$ (including those of unbounded rank), where products of subsets are replaced by tensor products of representations. Let $G$ be a finite simple group of Lie type and $χ$ a character of $G$. Let $|χ|$ denote the sum of the squares of the degrees of all (distinct) irreducible characters of $G$ which are constituents of $χ$. We show that for all $δ>0$ there exists $ε>0$, in…
We examine the conjugacy growth series of all wreath products of the finitary permutation groups $\text{Sym}(X)$ and $\text{Alt}(X)$ for an infinite set $X$. We determine their asymptotics, and we characterize the limiting behavior between the $\text{Alt}(X)$ and $\text{Sym}(X)$ wreath products. In particular, their ratios form a limit if and only if the dimension of the symmetric wreath product is twice the dimension of the alternating wreath product.
We adapt Safin's result on powers of sets in free groups to obtain Helfgott type growth in free products: if A is any finite subset of a free product of two arbitrary groups then either A is conjugate into one of the factors, or the size of the triple product AAA of A is at least 1/7776 times the square of |A|, or A generates an infinite cyclic or infinite dihedral group. We also point out that if A is any finite subset of a limit group then |AAA| satisfies the above inequality unless A generates a free abelian group. This gives rise to many infinite groups G where there exist c>0 and d=1 such…
Consider the wreath product $H\wr G$, where $H\ne 1$ is finite and $G$ is finitely generated. We show that the Assouad-Nagata dimension $\dim_{AN}(H\wr G)$ of $H\wr G$ depends on the growth of $G$ as follows: If the growth of $G$ is not bounded by a linear function, then $\dim_{AN}(H\wr G)=\infty$, otherwise $\dim_{AN}(H\wr G)=\dim_{AN}(G)\leq 1$.