In the first, mostly expository, part of this paper, a graded Lie algebra is associated to every group G given with an N-series of subgroups. The asymptotics of the Poincare series of this algebra give estimates on the growth of the group G. This establishes the existence of a gap between polynomial growth and growth of type $e^{\sqrt n}$ in the class of residually-p groups, and gives examples of finitely generated p-groups of uniformly exponential growth. In the second part, we produce two examples of groups of finite width and describe their Lie algebras, introducing a notion of Cayley graph for graded Lie algebras. We compute explicitly their lower central and dimensional series, and outline a general method applicable to some other groups from the class of branch groups. These examples produce counterexamples to a conjecture on the structure of just-infinite groups of finite width.
The conjugacy growth function counts the number of distinct conjugacy classes in a ball of radius $n$. We give a lower bound for the conjugacy growth of certain branch groups, among them the Grigorchuk group. This bound is a function of intermediate growth. We further proof that certain branch groups have the property that every element can be expressed as a product of uniformly boundedly many conjugates of the generators. We call this property bounded conjugacy width. We also show how bounded conjugacy width relates to other algebraic properties of groups and apply these results to study the …
We compute the structure of the Lie algebras associated to two examples of branch groups, and show that one has finite width while the other, the ``Gupta-Sidki group'', has unbounded width. This answers a question by Sidki. More precisely, the Lie algebra of the Gupta-Sidki group has Gelfand-Kirillov dimension $\log3/\log(1+\sqrt2)$. We then draw a general result relating the growth of a branch group, of its Lie algebra, of its graded group ring, and of a natural homogeneous space we call "parabolic space", namely the quotient of the group by the stabilizer of an infinite ray. The growth of th…
We give very precise bounds for the congruence subgroup growth of arithmetic groups. This allows us to determine the subgroup growth of irreducible lattices of semisimple Lie groups. In the most general case our results depend on the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis for number fields but we can state the following unconditional theorem: Let $G$ be a simple Lie group of real rank at least 2, different than $D_4(\bbc)$, and let $Γ$ be any non-uniform lattice of $G$. Let $s_n(Γ)$ denote the number of subgroups of index at most $n$ in $Γ$. Then the limit $\lim\limits_{n\to \infty} \frac{\log s_n(Γ)}…
Introduced by Gromov in the nineties, the systolic growth of a Lie group gives the smallest possible covolume of a lattice with a given systole. In a simply connected nilpotent Lie group, this function has polynomial growth, but can grow faster than the volume growth. We express this systolic growth function in terms of discrete cocompact subrings of the Lie algebra, making it more practical to estimate. After providing some general upper bounds, we develop methods to provide nontrivial lower bounds. We provide the first computations of the asymptotics of the systolic growth of nilpotent group…
The Grigorchuk and Gupta-Sidki groups are natural examples of self-similar finitely generated periodic groups. The author constructed their analogue in case of restricted Lie algebras of characteristic 2, Shestakov and Zelmanov extended this construction to an arbitrary positive characteristic. It is known that the famous construction of Golod yields finitely generated associative nil-algebras of exponential growth. Recent extensions of that approach allowed to construct finitely generated associative nil-algebras of polynomial and intermediate growth. Another motivation of the paper is a cons…
We prove that if L is a finite simple group of Lie type and A a symmetric set of generators of L, then A grows i.e |AAA| > |A|^{1+epsilon} where epsilon depends only on the Lie rank of L, or AAA=L. This implies that for a family of simple groups L of Lie type of bounded rank the diameter of any Cayley graph is polylogarithmic in |L|. We obtain a similar bound for the diameters of all Cayley graphs of perfect subgroups of GL(n,p) generated by their elements of order p. We also obtain some new families of expanders. We also prove the following partial extension. Let G be a subgroup of GL(n,p), p…
We prove that if L is a finite simple group of Lie type and A a symmetric set of generators of L, then A grows i.e |AAA| > |A|^(1+epsilon) where epsilon depends only on the Lie rank of L, or AAA=L. This implies that for a family of simple groups L of Lie type the diameter of any Cayley graph is polylogarithmic in |L|. Combining our result on growth with known results of Bourgain,Gamburd and Varjú it follows that if LAMBDA is a Zariski-dense subgroup of SL(d,Z) generated by a finite symmetric set S, then for square-free moduli m which are relatively prime to some number m_0 the Cayley graphs Ga…
Let $G$ be a free group of rank $n$ and $H\subset G$ its subgroup of finite index. Then $H$ is also a free group and the rank $m$ of $H$ is determined by Schreier's formula $m-1=(n-1)\cdot|G:H|.$ Any subalgebra of a free Lie algebra is also free. But a straightforward analogue of Schreier's formula for free Lie algebras does not exist, because any subalgebra of finite codimension has an infinite number of generators. But the appropriate Schreier's formula for free Lie algebras exists in terms of formal power series. There exists also a version in terms of exponential generating functions. This…
In this paper, we consider the conjugacy growth function of a group, which counts the number of conjugacy classes which intersect a ball of radius $n$ centered at the identity. We prove that in the case of virtually polycyclic groups, this function is either exponential or polynomially bounded, and is polynomially bounded exactly when the group is virtually nilpotent. The proof is fairly short, and makes use of the fact that any polycyclic group has a subgroup of finite index which can be embedded as a lattice in a Lie group, as well as exponential radical of Lie groups and Dirichlet's approxi…
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 bound to the number of conjugacy classes of maximal subgroups of any almost simple group whose socle is a classical group of Lie type. The bound is $2n^{5.2}+n\log_2\log_2 q$, where $n$ is the dimension of the classical socle and $q$ is the size of the defining field. To obtain the bound, we first bound the number of projective cross-characteristic representations of simple groups of Lie type as a function of the representation degree. These bounds are computed for different families of groups separately. In the computation, we use information on class numbers, minimal …
We investigate the rate of growth of the function of n which counts the number of complex irreducible representations of a fixed group of degree less than or equal to n. The emphasis is on linear groups, especially compact real and p-adic Lie groups arithmetic groups.
We study the existence of various types of gradings on Lie algebras, such as Carnot gradings or gradings in positive integers, and prove that the existence of such gradings is invariant under extensions of scalars. As an application, we prove that if G is a finitely generated nilpotent group, its systolic growth is asymptotically equivalent to its word growth if and only if the Malcev completion of G is Carnot. We also characterize when G is non-cohopfian, in terms of the existence of a non-trivial grading in non-negative integers, and deduce that this property only depends on its real (or eve…
We establish a fixed point property for a certain class of locally compact groups, including almost connected Lie groups and compact groups of finite abelian width, which act by simplicial isometries on finite rank buildings with measurable stabilisers of points. As an application, we deduce amongst other things that all topological one-parameter subgroups of a real or complex Kac-Moody group are obtained by exponentiating ad-locally finite elements of the corresponding Lie algebra.
Suppose $G$ is a compact semisimple Lie group, $μ$ is the normalized Haar measure on $G$, and $A, A^2 \subseteq G$ are measurable. We show that $$μ(A^2)\geq \min\{1, 2μ(A)+ημ(A)(1-2μ(A))\}$$ with the absolute constant $η>0$ (independent from the choice of $G$) quantitatively determined. We also show a more general result for connected compact groups without a toric quotient and resolve the Kemperman Inverse Problem from 1964.
We prove that Chevalley groups over polynomial rings $\mathbb F_q[t]$ and over Laurent polynomial $\mathbb F_q[t,t^{-1}]$ rings, where $\mathbb F_q$ is a finite field, are boundedly elementarily generated. Using this we produce explicit bounds of the commutator width of these groups. Under some additional assumptions, we prove similar results for other classes of Chevalley groups over Dedekind rings of arithmetic rings in positive characteristic. As a corollary, we produce explicit estimates for the commutator width of affine Kac--Moody groups defined over finite fields. The paper contains als…
In this article we prove a conjecture of A. Lubotzky: let G = G_0(K), where K is a local field of characteristic p>5, G_0 is a simply connected, absolutely almost simple K-group of K-rank at least 2. We give the rate of growth of r_x(G) :={H< G| H a lattice in G; vol(G/H)<x}/~, where H_1\simH_2 if and only if there is an abstract automorphism t of G such that H_2 =t(H_1). We also study the rate of subgroup growth s_x(H) of any lattice H in G. As a result we show that these two functions have the same rate of growth which proves Lubotzky's conjecture. Along the way, we also study the rate of gr…
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 show that every continuous homogeneous quasimorphism on a finite-dimensional 1-connected simple Lie group arises as the relative growth of any continuous bi-invariant partial order on that group. More generally we show, that an arbitrary homogeneous quasimorphism can be reconstructed as the relative growth of a partial order subject to a certain sandwich condition. This provides a link between invariant orders and bounded cohomology and allows the concrete computation of relative growth for finite dimensional simple Lie groups as well as certain infinite-dimensional Lie groups arising from …
In this paper we measure how efficiently a finite simple group $G$ is generated by its elements of order $p$, where $p$ is a fixed prime. This measure, known as the $p$-width of $G$, is the minimal $k\in \mathbb{N}$ such that any $g\in G$ can be written as a product of at most $k$ elements of order $p$. Using primarily character theoretic methods, we sharply bound the $p$-width of some low rank families of Lie type groups, as well as the simple alternating and sporadic groups.
In this article groups of controlled characters of a combinatorial Hopf algebra are considered from the perspective of infinite-dimensional Lie theory. A character is controlled in our sense if it satisfies certain growth bounds, e.g.\ exponential growth. We study these characters for combinatorial Hopf algebras. Following Loday and Ronco, a combinatorial Hopf algebra is a graded and connected Hopf algebra which is a polynomial algebra with an explicit choice of basis (usually identified with combinatorial objects such as trees, graphs, etc.). If the growth bounds and the Hopf algebra are comp…
We get asymptotics for the volume of large balls in an arbitrary locally compact group G with polynomial growth. This is done via a study of the geometry of G and a generalization of P. Pansu's thesis. In particular, we show that any such G is weakly commensurable to some simply connected solvable Lie group S, the Lie shadow of G. We also show that large balls in G have an asymptotic shape, i.e. after a suitable renormalization, they converge to a limiting compact set which can be interpreted geometrically. We then discuss the speed of convergence, treat some examples and give an application t…
We introduce the {\it growth partition function} $Z_{Γ,G}(t)$ associate with any cancellative infinite monoid $Γ$ with a finite generator system $G$. It is a power series in $t$ whose coefficients lie in integral Lie-like space $\mathcal{L}_{\Z}(Γ,G)$ in the configuration algebra associated with the Cayley graph $(Γ,G)$. We determine them for homogeneous monoids admitting left greatest common divisor and right common multiple. Then, for braid monoids and Artin monoids of finite type, using that formula, we explicitly determine their limit partition functions $ω_{Γ,G}$.
We show that a compactly generated locally compact group of polynomial growth having no non-trivial compact normal subgroups can be embedded as a co-compact subgroup into a semidirect product of a connected, simply connected, nilpotent Lie group and a compact group. There is also a uniqueness statement for this extension.
Twin-width is a recently introduced graph parameter with applications in algorithmics, combinatorics, and finite model theory. For graphs of bounded degree, finiteness of twin-width is preserved by quasi-isometry. Thus, through Cayley graphs, it defines a group invariant. We prove that groups which are abelian, hyperbolic, ordered, solvable, or with polynomial growth, have finite twin-width. Twin-width can be characterised by excluding patterns in the self-action by product of the group elements. Based on this characterisation, we propose a strengthening called uniform twin-width, which is sta…
We study the asymptotic behaviour of Betti numbers, twisted torsion and other spectral invariants of sequences of locally symmetric spaces. Our main results are uniform versions of the DeGeorge--Wallach Theorem, of a theorem of Delorme and various other limit multiplicity theorems. A basic idea is to adapt the notion of Benjamini--Schramm convergence (BS-convergence), originally introduced for sequences of finite graphs of bounded degree, to sequences of Riemannian manifolds, and analyze the possible limits. We show that BS-convergence of locally symmetric spaces implies convergence, in an app…
