In this paper we obtain uniform positive lower bounds on stable commutator length in word-hyperbolic groups and certain groups acting on hyperbolic spaces (namely the mapping class group acting on the complex of curves, and an amalgamated free product acting on the Bass-Serre tree). If G is a word hyperbolic group which is delta hyperbolic with respect to a symmetric generating set S, then there is a positive constant C depending only on delta and on |S| such that every element of G either has a power which is conjugate to its inverse, or else the stable commutator length is at least equal to C. By Bavard's theorem, these lower bounds on stable commutator length imply the existence of quasimorphisms with uniform control on the defects; however, we show how to construct such quasimorphisms directly.
We also prove various separation theorems, constructing homogeneous quasimorphisms (again with uniform estimates) which are positive on some prescribed element while vanishing on some family of independent elements whose translation lengths are uniformly bounded.
Finally, we prove that the first accumulation point for stable commutator length in a torsion-free word hyperbolic group is contained between 1/12 and 1/2. This gives a universal sense of what it means for a conjugacy class in a hyperbolic group to have a small stable commutator length, and can be thought of as a kind of "homological Margulis lemma".
We enumerate the fibres of commutator word maps over p-groups of nilpotency class less than p with exponent p. We also give some examples and enumerate the fibre sizes of all word maps over p-groups of class 2 with exponent p.
Elements of the commutator subgroup of a free group can be presented as values of canonical forms, called Wicks forms. We show that, starting from sufficiently high genus g, there is a sequence of words w(g) which can be presented by f(g) distinct Wicks forms, where f(g)>g!. Moreover we may choose these words w(g) to be square free.
Let $P(G)$ denotes the set of sizes of fibers of non-trivial commutators of the commutator word map. Here, we prove that $|P(G)|=1$, for any finite group $G$ of nilpotency class $3$ with exactlly two conjugacy class sizes. We also show that for given $n\geq 1$, there exists a finite group $G$ of nilpotency class $2$ with exactlly two conjugacy class sizes such that $|P(G)|=n$.
Let $G$ be a finite group of order $p^am$, where $p$ is a prime and $m$ is not divisible by $p$, and let $P$ be a Sylow $p$-subgroup of $G$. If $w$ is an outer commutator word, we prove that $P\cap w(G)$ is generated by the intersection of $P$ with the set of $m$th powers of all values of $w$ in $G$
We prove that outer commutator words are uniformly concise, i.e. if an outer commutator word w takes m different values in a group G, then the order of the verbal subgroup w(G) is bounded by a function depending only on m and not on w or G. This is obtained as a consequence of a structure theorem for the subgroup w(G), which is valid if G is soluble, and without assuming that w takes finitely many values in G. More precisely, there is an abelian series of w(G), such that every section of the series can be generated by values of w all of whose powers are also values of w in that section. For th…
In 1962 M.J. Wicks gave a precise description of the form a commutator could take in a free group or a free product and in 1973 extended this description to cover a product of two squares. Subsequently, lists of "Wicks forms" were found for arbitrary products of commutators and squares in free groups and free products, by Culler, Vdovina and other authors. Here we construct Wicks forms for products of commutators and squares in a hyperbolic group. As applications we give explicit lists of forms for a commutator and for a square, and find bounds on the lengths of conjugating elements required t…
Let $w$ be a multilinear commutator word, that is, a commutator of weight $n$ in $n$ different group variables. It is proved that if $G$ is a profinite group in which all pronilpotent subgroups generated by $w$-values are periodic, then the verbal subgroup $w(G)$ is locally finite.
In 1962 M.J.Wicks gave a list of forms for commutators in both free groups and free products. Since then similar lists have been constructed for elements of higher genus. A. Vdovina has described a method for the construction of forms for elements of any genus in free products. We give a similar result for the construction of such forms in any hyperbolic group H and from this we obtain a full list of forms for commutators in H.
A group G has restricted centralizers if for each g in G the centralizer C_G(g) either is finite or has finite index in G. A theorem of Shalev states that a profinite group with restricted centralizers is abelian-by-finite. In the present article we handle profinite groups with restricted centralizers of word-values. We show that if w is a multilinear commutator word and G a profinite group with restricted centralizers of w-values, then the verbal subgroup w(G) is abelian-by-finite.
Let $w$ be a group-word. Suppose that the set of all $w$-values in a profinite group $G$ is contained in a union of countably many subgroups. It is natural to ask in what way the structure of the verbal subgroup $w(G)$ depends on the properties of the covering subgroups. The present article is a survey of recent results related to that question. In particular we survey results on finite and countable coverings of word-values (mostly commutators) by procyclic, abelian, nilpotent, and soluble subgroups, as well as subgroups with finiteness conditions. The last section of the paper is devoted to …
The commutator length $cl_G(g)$ of an element $g \in [G,G]$ in the commutator subgroup of a group $G$ is the least number of commutators needed to express $g$ as their product. If $G$ is a non-abelian free groups, then given an integer $n \in \mathbb{N}$ and an element $g \in [G,G]$ the decision problem which determines if $cl_G(g) \leq n$ is NP-complete. Thus, unless P=NP, there is no algorithm that computes $cl_G(g)$ in polynomial time in terms of $|g|$, the wordlength of $g$. This statement remains true for groups which have a retract to a non-abelian free group, such as non-abelian right-a…
Let $F$ be a free group. We present for arbitrary $g\in\mathbb{N}$ a LogSpace (and thus polynomial time) algorithm that determines whether a given $w\in F$ is a product of at most $g$ commutators; and more generally an algorithm that determines, given $w\in F$, the minimal $g$ such that $w$ may be written as a product of $g$ commutators (and returns $\infty$ if no such $g$ exists). The algorithm also returns words $x_1,y_1,\dots,x_g,y_g$ such that $w=[x_1,y_1]\cdots[x_g,y_g]$. The algorithms we present are also efficient in practice. Using them, we produce the first example of a word in the fr…
Let $G$ be a finite group. We show that the order of the subgroup generated by coprime $γ_k$-commutators (respectively $δ_k$-commutators) is bounded in terms of the size of the set of coprime $γ_k$-commutators (respectively $δ_k$-commutators). This is in parallel with the classical theorem due to Turner-Smith that the words $γ_k$ and $δ_k$ are concise.
Let m, n be positive integers, v a multilinear commutator word and w = v^m. We prove that if G is a residually finite group in which all w-values are n-Engel, then the verbal subgroup w(G) is locally nilpotent. We also examine the question whether this is true in the case where G is locally graded rather than residually finite. We answer the question affirmatively in the case where m = 1. Moreover, we show that if u is a non-commutator word and G is a locally graded group in which all u-values are n-Engel, then the verbal subgroup u(G) is locally nilpotent.
The study of word hyperbolic groups is a prominent topic in geometric group theory; however word hyperbolic groups are defined by a geometric condition which does not extend naturally to semigroups. We propose a linguistic definition. Roughly speaking a semigroup is word hyperbolic if its multiplication table is a context free language. For groups this definition is equivalent to the original geometric one. We also briefly consider word problems of semigroups.
This work is concerned with the stable norm in word hyperbolic groups as defined by Gromov. We give a short elementary proof of one of its basic property, that is existence of a computable uniform non null lower bound for stable norm in a word hyperbolic group.
We prove that the compressed word problem in a group that is hyperbolic relative to a collection of free abelian subgroups is solvable in polynomial time.
Formal languages based on the multiplication tables of finitely generated groups are investigated and used to give a linguistic characterization of word hyperbolic groups.
Thurston has claimed (unpublished) that central extensions of word hyperbolic groups by finitely generated abelian groups are automatic. We show that they are in fact biautomatic. Further, we show that every 2-dimensional cohomology class on a word hyperbolic group can be represented by a bounded 2-cocycle. This lends weight to the claim of Gromov that for a word hyperbolic group, the cohomology in every dimension is bounded.
This paper proves that any monoid presented by a confluent context-free monadic rewriting system is word-hyperbolic. This result then applied to answer a question asked by Duncan & Gilman by exhibiting an example of a word-hyperbolic monoid that does not admit a word-hyperbolic structure with uniqueness (that is, in which the language of representatives maps bijectively onto the monoid).
Let $w = [[x^k, y^l], [x^m, y^n]]$ be a non-trivial double commutator word. We show that $w$ is surjective on $\mathrm{PSL}_2(K)$, where $K$ is an algebraically closed field of characteristic $0$.
Let $m,n$ be positive integers and $w$ a multilinear commutator word. Assume that $G$ is a finite group having subgroups $G_1,\ldots,G_m$ whose union contains all $w$-values in $G$. Assume further that all elements of the subgroups $G_1,\ldots,G_m$ are $n$-Engel in $G$. It is shown that the verbal subgroup $w(G)$ is $s$-Engel for some $\{m,n,w\}$-bounded number $s$.
We prove that, for a finitely generated group hyperbolic relative to virtually abelian subgroups, the generalised word problem for a parabolic subgroup is the language of a real-time Turing machine. Then, for a hyperbolic group, we show that the generalised word problem for a quasiconvex subgroup is a real-time language under either of two additional hypotheses on the subgroup. By extending the Muller-Schupp theorem we show that the generalised word problem for a finitely generated subgroup of a finitely generated virtually free group is context-free. Conversely, we prove that a hyperbolic gro…
We combine concepts from random matrix theory and free probability together with ideas from the theory of commutator length in groups and maps from surfaces, and establish new connections between the two. More particularly, we study measures induced by free words on the unitary groups $U(n)$. Every word $w$ in the free group $F_r$ on $r$ generators determines a word map from $U(n)^r$ to $U(n)$, defined by substitutions. The $w$-measure on $U(n)$ is defined as the pushforward via this word map of the Haar measure on $U(n)^r$. Let $Tr_w(n)$ denote the expected trace of a random unitary matrix sa…
Let w be a group word. It is conjectured that if w has only countably many values in a profinite group G, then the verbal subgroup w(G) is finite. In the present paper we confirm the conjecture in the cases where w is a multilinear commutator word, or the word x^2, or the word [x^2,y].
It is shown that there exists a finitely generated infinite simple group of infinite commutator width, and that the commutator width of a finitely generated infinite boundedly simple group can be arbitrarily large. Besides, such groups can be constructed with decidable word and conjugacy problems.
This paper establishes the existence of a gap for the stable length spectrum on a hyperbolic manifold. If M is a hyperbolic n-manifold, for every positive e there is a positive d depending only on n and on e such that an element of pi_1(M) with stable commutator length less than d is represented by a geodesic with length less than e. Moreover, for any such M, the first accumulation point for stable commutator length on conjugacy classes is at least 1/12. Conversely, "most" short geodesics in hyperbolic 3-manifolds have arbitrarily small stable commutator length. Thus stable commutator length i…
We construct an example of a torsion free freely indecomposable finitely presented non-quasiconvex subgroup $H$ of a word hyperbolic group $G$ such that the limit set of $H$ is not the limit set of a quasiconvex subgroup of $G$. In particular, this gives a counterexample to the conjecture of G.Swarup that a finitely presented one-ended subgroup of a word hyperbolic group is quasiconvex if and only if it has finite index in its virtual normalizer.
It is shown that there exist finitely generated infinite simple groups of infinite commutator width and infinite square width on which there exists no stably unbounded conjugation-invariant norm, and in particular stable commutator length vanishes. Moreover, a recursive presentation of such a group with decidable word and conjugacy problems is constructed.
We prove that the generalised word problem of a finitely generated subgroup of a finitely generated virtually free group is context-free, that a hyperbolic group must be virtually free if it has a torsion-free quasiconvex subgroup of infinite index with context-free generalised word problem, and that, for any hyperbolic group, the generalised word problem of a torsion-free quasiconvex subgroup is recognised by a real-time Turing machine.
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.
Let G be a finitely presented group, and G' its commutator subgroup. Let C be the Cayley graph of G' with all commutators in G as generators. Then C is large scale simply connected. Furthermore, if G is a torsion-free nonelementary word-hyperbolic group, C is one-ended. Hence (in this case), the asymptotic dimension of C is at least 2.
For each positive integer $k$ we present an example of Coxeter system $(G_k,S_k)$ such that $G_k$ is a word-hyperbolic Coxeter group, for any two generating reflections $s,t\in S_k$ the product $st$ has finite order, and the Coxeter graph of $S_k$ has negative inertia index equal to $k$. In particular, $G_k$ cannot be embedded into pseudo-orthogonal group $O(n,k-1)$ for any $n$ as a reflection group with generating set being reflections w.r.t. $(G_k,S_k)$
A result of Gersten states that if $G$ is a hyperbolic group with integral cohomological dimension $\mathsf{cd}_{\mathbb{Z}}(G)=2$ then every finitely presented subgroup is hyperbolic. We generalize this result for the rational case $\mathsf{cd}_{\mathbb{Q}}(G)=2$. In particular, our result applies to the class of torsion-free hyperbolic groups $G$ with $\mathsf{cd}_{\mathbb{Z}}(G)=3$ and $\mathsf{cd}_{\mathbb{Q}}(G)=2$ discovered by Bestvina and Mess.
We investigate which free constructions (amalgamated products and HNN-extensions) over word hyperbolic groups produce groups that are again word hyperbolic. A complete answer is obtained for the case when the amalgamated subgroups are virtually cyclic. The results are applied, in particular, to show that a ${\bf Q}$-completion of a torsion-free hyperbolic group has solvable word problem and conjugacy problem.
In this paper, we give a proof of the result of Brandenbursky and Kȩdra which says that the commutator subgroup of the infinite braid group admits stably unbounded norms. Moreover, we observe the norms which we constructed are equivalent to the biinvariant word norm studied by Brandenbursky and Kȩdra.
Given a permutational wreath product sequence of cyclic groups of prime order we research a commutator width of such groups and some properties of its commutator subgroup. Commutator width of Sylow 2-subgroups of alternating group $A_{2^{k}}$, permutation group $S_{2^k}$ and $C_p \wr B$ were founded. The result of research was extended on subgroups $(Syl_2 {A_{2^k}})'$, $p>2$. The paper presents a construction of commutator subgroup of Sylow 2-subgroups of symmetric and alternating groups. Also minimal generic sets of Sylow 2-subgroups of $A_{2^k}$ were founded. Elements presentation of $(Syl_…
Every word $w$ in a free group naturally induces a probability measure on every compact group $G$. For example, if $w=\left[x,y\right]$ is the commutator word, a random element sampled by the $w$-measure is given by the commutator $\left[g,h\right]$ of two independent, Haar-random elements of $G$. Back in 1896, Frobenius showed that if $G$ is a finite group and $ψ$ an irreducible character, then the expected value of $ψ\left(\left[g,h\right]\right)$ is $\frac{1}{ψ\left(e\right)}$. This is true for any compact group, and completely determines the $\left[x,y\right]$-measure on these groups. An a…
We show that if $G$ is a non-elementary torsion-free word hyperbolic group then there exists another word hyperbolic group $G^*$, such that $G$ is a subgroup of $G^*$ but $G$ is not quasiconvex in $G^*$.
For the free group $F_r$ on $r>1$ generators (respectively, the free product $G_1 * G_2$ of two nontrivial finite groups $G_1$ and $G_2$), we obtain the asymptotic for the number of conjugacy classes of commutators in $F_r$ (respectively, $G_1 * G_2$) with a given word length in a fixed set of free generators (respectively, the set of generators given by the nontrivial elements of $G_1$ and $G_2$). Our result is proven by using the classification of commutators in free groups and in free products by Wicks, and builds on the works of Rivin and Sharp, who asymptotically counted the conjugacy cla…
A group word $w$ is said to be strongly concise in a class $\mathcal{C}$ of profinite groups if, for every group $G$ in $\mathcal{C}$ such that $w$ takes less than $2^{\aleph_0}$ values in $G$, the verbal subgroup $w(G)$ is finite. Detomi, Morigi and Shumyatsky established that multilinear commutator words -- and the particular words $x^2$ and $[x^2,y]$ -- have the property that the corresponding verbal subgroup is finite in a profinite group $G$ whenever the word takes at most countably many values in $G$. They conjectured that, in fact, this should be true for every word. In particular, thei…
This paper studies decision problems for semigroups that are word-hyperbolic in the sense of Duncan & Gilman. A fundamental investigation reveals that the natural definition of a `word-hyperbolic structure' has to be strengthened slightly in order to define a unique semigroup up to isomorphism. The isomorphism problem is proven to be undecidable for word-hyperbolic semigroups (in contrast to the situation for word-hyperbolic groups). It is proved that it is undecidable whether a word-hyperbolic semigroup is automatic, asynchronously automatic, biautomatic, or asynchronously biautomatic. (These…
In this note we prove the claim given in the title. A group G is noncommutatively slender if each map from the fundamental group of the Hawaiian Earring to G factors through projection to a canonical free subgroup. Graham Higman, in his seminal 1952 paper, proved that free groups are noncommutatively slender. Such groups were first defined by K. Eda. Eda has asked which finitely presented groups are noncommutatively slender. This result demonstrates that random finitely presented groups in the few- relator sense of Gromov are noncommutatively slender.
Let w be a group-word. Suppose that the set of all w-values in a profinite group G is contained in a union of countably many cosets of subgroups. We are concerned with the question to what extent the structure of the verbal subgroup w(G) depends on the properties of the subgroups. We prove the following theorem. Let C be a class of groups closed under taking subgroups, quotients, and such that in any group the product of finitely many normal C-subgroups is again a C-subgroup. If w is a multilinear commutator and G is a profinite group such that the set of all w-values is contained in a union o…
We describe a procedure which verifies that a group given by generators and relators is word-hyperbolic. This procedure always works with a group which is word-hyperbolic, provided there is sufficient memory and time devoted to the problem. If the group is not word-hyperbolic, the procedure continues indefinitely. We also describe a procedure which computes the thinness of geodesic triangles in the Cayley graph of a word-hyperbolic group. Again this procedure is bound to work, given sufficient memory and time.
The main theme of this paper is higher virtual algebraic fibering properties of right-angled Coxeter groups (RACGs), with a special focus on those whose defining flag complex is a finite building. We prove for particular classes of finite buildings that their random induced subcomplexes have a number of strong properties, most prominently that they are highly connected. From this we are able to deduce that the commutator subgroup of a RACG, with defining flag complex a finite building of a certain type, admits an epimorphism to $\mathbb{Z}$ whose kernel has strong topological finiteness proper…
Given a group-word w and a group G, the verbal subgroup w(G) is the one generated by all w-values in G. The word w is called concise if w(G) is finite whenever the set of w-values in G is finite. It is an open question whether every word is concise in residually finite groups. Let w=w(x_1,..,x_k) be a multilinear commutator word, n a positive integer and q a prime power. In the present article we show that the word [w^q,_n y] is concise in residually finite groups while the word [w,_n y] is boundedly concise in residually finite groups.
We discuss the linearity and discreteness of amalgamated products of linear word-hyperbolic groups. In particular, we prove that the double of an Anosov group along a maximal cyclic subgroup is always linear, and we construct examples of such groups which do not admit any discrete and faithful representation in rank 1. We also build new examples of non-linear word-hyperbolic groups, elaborating on a previous work of Canary--Stover--Tsouvalas.
Given a group-word $w$ and a group $G$, the set of $w$-values in $G$ is denoted by $G_w$ and the verbal subgroup $w(G)$ is the one generated by $G_w$. The word $w$ is concise if $w(G)$ is finite for all groups $G$ in which $G_w$ is finite. We obtain several results supporting the conjecture that the word $[u_1,\dots,u_s]$ is concise whenever the words $u_1,\dots,u_s$ are non-commutator.
We examine residual properties of word-hyperbolic groups, adapting a method introduced by Darren Long to study the residual properties of Kleinian groups.
