Let W be a simply laced Weyl group of finite type and rank n. If W has type $E_7$, $E_8$ or $D_n$ for n even, then the root system of W has subsystems of type $nA_1$. This gives rise to an irreducible Macdonald representation of W spanned by n-roots, which are products of n orthogonal roots in the symmetric algebra of the reflection representation. We prove that in these cases, the set of all maximal sets of orthogonal positive roots has the structure of a quasiparabolic set in the sense of Rains–Vazirani. The quasiparabolic structure can be described in terms of certain quadruples of orthogonal positive roots which we call crossings, nestings and alignments. This leads to nonnesting and noncrossing bases for the Macdonald representation, as well as some highly structured partially ordered sets. We use the $8$-roots in type $E_8$ to give a concise description of a graph that is known to be non-isomorphic but quantum isomorphic to the orthogonality graph of the $E_8$ root system.

We prove that Thompson’s group T and, more generally, all the Higman–Thompson groups $T_n$ have quadratic Dehn function.

We investigate semigroups S which have the property that every subsemigroup of $S\times S$ which contains the diagonal $\{ (s,s)\colon s\in S\}$ is necessarily a congruence on S. We call such an S a DSC semigroup. It is well known that all finite groups are DSC, and easy to see that every DSC semigroup must be simple. Building on this, we show that for broad classes of semigroups, including periodic, stable, inverse and several well-known types of simple semigroups, the only DSC members are groups. However, it turns out that there exist nongroup DSC semigroups, which we obtain by utilising a construction introduced by Byleen for the purpose of constructing interesting congruence-free semigroups. Such examples can additionally be regular or bisimple.

A subgroup X of a group G is said to be transitively normal if X is normal in any subgroup Y of G such that $X\leq Y$ and X is subnormal in Y. We investigate the structure of generalised soluble groups with dense transitively normal subgroups, that is, groups in which every nonempty open interval in their subgroup lattice contains a transitively normal subgroup. In particular, it will be proved that nonperiodic generalised soluble groups with dense transitively normal subgroups are abelian.

We strengthen two results of Moretó. We prove that the index of the Fitting subgroup is bounded in terms of the degrees of the irreducible monomial Brauer characters of the finite solvable group G and it is also bounded in terms of the average degree of the irreducible Brauer characters of G that lie over a linear character of the Fitting subgroup.

We compute the co-multiplication of the algebraic Morava K-theory for split orthogonal groups. This allows us to compute the decomposition of the Morava motives of generic maximal orthogonal Grassmannians and to compute a Morava K-theory analogue of the J-invariant in terms of the ordinary (Chow) J-invariant.

Let g be an element of a group G. For a positive integer n, let $R_n(g)$ be the subgroup generated by all commutators $[\ldots [[g,x],x],\ldots ,x]$ over $x\in G$, where x is repeated n times. Similarly, $L_n(g)$ is defined as the subgroup generated by all commutators $[\ldots [[x,g],g],\ldots ,g]$, where $x\in G$ and g is repeated n times. In the literature, there are several results showing that certain properties of groups with small subgroups $R_n(g)$ or $L_n(g)$ are close to those of Engel groups. The present article deals with orderable groups in which, for some $n\geq 1$, the subgroups $R_n(g)$ are polycyclic. Let $h\geq 0$, $n>0$ be integers and G be an orderable group in which $R_n(g)$ is polycyclic with Hirsch length at most h for every $g\in G$. It is proved that there are $(h,n)$-bounded numbers $h^*$ and $c^*$ such that G has a finitely generated normal nilpotent subgroup N with $h(N)\leq h^*$ and $G/N$ nilpotent of class at most $c^*$. The analogue of this theorem for $L_n(g)$ was established in 2018 by Shumyatsky [‘Orderable groups with Engel-like conditions’, J. Algebra 499 (2018), 313–320].

We determine the geometric monodromy groups attached to various families, both one-parameter and multi-parameter, of exponential sums over finite fields, or, more precisely, the geometric monodromy groups of the $\ell $-adic local systems on affine spaces in characteristic $p> 0$ whose trace functions are these exponential sums. The exponential sums here are much more general than we previously were able to consider. As a byproduct, we determine the number of irreducible components of maximal dimension in certain intersections of Fermat surfaces. We also show that in any family of such local systems, say parameterized by an affine space S, there is a dense open set of S over which the geometric monodromy group of the corresponding local system is a fixed known group.

A spline is an assignment of polynomials to the vertices of a graph whose edges are labeled by ideals, where the difference of two polynomials labeling adjacent vertices must belong to the corresponding ideal. The set of splines forms a ring. We consider spline rings where the underlying graph is the Cayley graph of a symmetric group generated by a collection of transpositions. These rings generalize the GKM construction for equivariant cohomology rings of flag, regular semisimple Hessenberg and permutohedral varieties. These cohomology rings carry two actions of the symmetric group $S_n$ whose graded characters are both of general interest in algebraic combinatorics. In this paper, we generalize the graded $S_n$-representations from the cohomologies of the above varieties to splines on Cayley graphs of $S_n$ and then (1) give explicit module and ring generators for whenever the $S_n$-generating set is minimal, (2) give a combinatorial characterization of when graded pieces of one $S_n$-representation is trivial, and (3) compute the first degree piece of both graded characters for all generating sets.

Let $G \leqslant \mathrm {Sym}(\Omega )$ be a finite transitive permutation group and recall that an element in G is a derangement if it has no fixed points on $\Omega $. Let $\Delta (G)$ be the set of derangements in G and define $\delta (G) = |\Delta (G)|/|G|$ and $\Delta (G)^2 = \{ xy \,:\, x,y \in \Delta (G)\}$. In recent years, there has been a focus on studying derangements in simple groups, leading to several remarkable results. For example, by combining a theorem of Fulman and Guralnick with recent work by Larsen, Shalev and Tiep, it follows that $\delta (G) \geqslant 0.016$ and $G = \Delta (G)^2$ for all sufficiently large simple transitive groups G. In this paper, we extend these results in several directions. For example, we prove that $\delta (G) \geqslant 89/325$ and $G = \Delta (G)^2$ for all finite simple primitive groups with soluble point stabilisers, without any order assumptions, and we show that the given lower bound on $\delta (G)$ is best possible. We also prove that every finite simple transitive group can be generated by two conjugate derangements, and we present several new results on derangements in arbitrary primitive permutation groups.

It is a theorem due to F. Haglund and D. Wise that reflection groups (aka Coxeter groups) virtually embed into right-angled reflection groups (aka right-angled Coxeter groups). In this article, we generalize this observation to rotation groups, which can be thought of as a common generalization of Coxeter groups and graph products of groups. More precisely, we prove that rotation groups (aka periagroups) virtually embed into right-angled rotation groups (aka graph products of groups).

If all of the entries of a large $S_n$ character table are covered up and you are allowed to uncover one entry at a time, then how can you quickly identify all of the indexing characters and conjugacy classes? We present a fast algorithmic solution that works even when n is so large that almost none of the entries of the character table can be computed. The fraction of the character table that needs to be uncovered is $O( n^2 \exp({-}2\pi\sqrt{n/6}))$, and for many of these entries we are only interested in whether the entry is zero.

Continuing our work on group-theoretic generalisations of the prime Ax–Katz Theorem, we give a lower bound on the p-adic divisibility of the cardinality of the set of simultaneous zeros $Z(f_1,f_2,\dots,f_r)$ of r maps $f_j\,{:}\,A\rightarrow B_j$ between arbitrary finite commutative groups A and $B_j$ in terms of the invariant factors of $A, B_1,B_2, \cdots,B_r$ and the functional degrees of the maps $f_1,f_2, \dots,f_r$.

This article presents new rationality results for the ratios of critical values of Rankin–Selberg L-functions of $\mathrm {GL}(n) \times \mathrm {GL}(n')$ over a totally imaginary field $F.$ The proof is based on a cohomological interpretation of Langlands’s contant term theorem via rank-one Eisenstein cohomology for the group $\mathrm {GL}(N)/F,$ where $N = n+n'.$ The internal structure of the totally imaginary base field has a delicate effect on the Galois equivariance properties of the critical values.

We study simple Lie algebras generated by extremal elements, over arbitrary fields of arbitrary characteristic. We show the following: (1) If the extremal geometry contains lines, then the Lie algebra admits a $5 \times 5$-grading that can be parametrized by a cubic norm structure; (2) If there exists a field extension of degree at most $2$ such that the extremal geometry over that field extension contains lines, and in addition, there exist symplectic pairs of extremal elements, then the Lie algebra admits a $5 \times 5$-grading that can be parametrized by a quadrangular algebra.

One of our key tools is a new definition of exponential maps that makes sense even over fields of characteristic $2$ and $3$, which ought to be interesting in its own right.

Not only was Jacques Tits a constant source of inspiration through his work, he also had a direct personal influence, notably through his threat to speak evil of our work if it did not include the characteristic 2 case.

—The Book of Involutions [KMRT98, p. xv]

In their celebrated paper [CLR10], Caputo, Liggett and Richthammer proved Aldous’ conjecture and showed that for an arbitrary finite graph, the spectral gap of the interchange process is equal to the spectral gap of the underlying random walk. A crucial ingredient in the proof was the Octopus Inequality — a certain inequality of operators in the group ring $\mathbb{R}\left[{\mathrm{Sym}}_{n}\right]$ of the symmetric group. Here we generalise the Octopus Inequality and apply it to generalising the Caputo–Liggett–Richthammer Theorem to certain hypergraphs, proving some cases of a conjecture of Caputo.

We study a family of Thompson-like groups built as rearrangement groups of fractals introduced by Belk and Forrest in 2019, each acting on a Ważewski dendrite. Each of these is a finitely generated group that is dense in the full group of homeomorphisms of the dendrite (studied by Monod and Duchesne in 2019) and has infinite-index finitely generated simple commutator subgroup, with a single possible exception. More properties are discussed, including finite subgroups, the conjugacy problem, invariable generation and existence of free subgroups. We discuss many possible generalisations, among which we find the Airplane rearrangement group $T_A$. Despite close connections with Thompson’s group F, dendrite rearrangement groups seem to share many features with Thompson’s group V.

This article is the second in a series investigating cartesian closed varieties. In first of these, we showed that every non-degenerate finitary cartesian variety is a variety of sets equipped with an action by a Boolean algebra B and a monoid M which interact to form what we call a matched pair ${\left[\smash{{B} \mathbin{\mid}{M} }\right]}$. In this article, we show that such pairs ${\left[\smash{{B} \mathbin{\mid}{M} }\right]}$ are equivalent to Boolean restriction monoids and also to ample source-étale topological categories; these are generalizations of the Boolean inverse monoids and ample étale topological groupoids used to encode self-similar structures such as Cuntz and Cuntz–Krieger $C^\ast$-algebras, Leavitt path algebras, and the $C^\ast$-algebras associated with self-similar group actions. We explain and illustrate these links and begin the programme of understanding how topological and algebraic properties of such groupoids can be understood from the logical perspective of the associated varieties.

In the present work, we investigate the Lie algebra of the Formanek-Procesi group $\textrm {FP}(A_{\Gamma })$ with base group $A_{\Gamma }$ a right-angled Artin group. We show that the Lie algebra $\textrm {gr}(\textrm {FP}(A_{\Gamma }))$ has a presentation that is dictated by the group presentation. Moreover, we show that if the base group $G$ is a finitely generated residually finite $p$-group, then $\textrm { FP}(G)$ is residually nilpotent. We also show that $\textrm {FP}(A_{\Gamma })$ is a residually torsion-free nilpotent group.