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.

It is argued that a nonsingular elliptic curve admits a natural or fundamental abelian heap structure uniquely determined by the curve itself. It is shown that the set of complex analytic or rational functions from a nonsingular elliptic curve to itself is a truss arising from endomorphisms of this heap.

We extend the group-theoretic notion of conditional flatness for a localization functor to any pointed category, and investigate it in the context of homological categories and of semi-abelian categories. In the presence of functorial fiberwise localization, analogous results to those obtained in the category of groups hold, and we provide existence theorems for certain localization functors in specific semi-abelian categories. We prove that a Birkhoff subcategory of an ideal determined category yields a conditionally flat localization, and explain how conditional flatness corresponds to the property of admissibility of an adjunction from the point of view of categorical Galois theory. Under the assumption of fiberwise localization, we give a simple criterion to determine when a (normal epi)-reflection is a torsion-free reflection. This is shown to apply, in particular, to nullification functors in any semi-abelian variety of universal algebras. We also relate semi-left-exactness for a localization functor L with what is called right properness for the L-local model structure.

We look at constructions of aperiodic subshifts of finite type (SFTs) on fundamental groups of graph of groups. In particular, we prove that all generalized Baumslag-Solitar groups (GBS) admit a strongly aperiodic SFT. Our proof is based on a structural theorem by Whyte and on two constructions of strongly aperiodic SFTs on $\mathbb {F}_n\times \mathbb {Z}$ and $BS(m,n)$ of our own. Our two constructions rely on a path-folding technique that lifts an SFT on $\mathbb {Z}^2$ inside an SFT on $\mathbb {F}_n\times \mathbb {Z}$ or an SFT on the hyperbolic plane inside an SFT on $BS(m,n)$. In the case of $\mathbb {F}_n\times \mathbb {Z}$, the path folding technique also preserves minimality, so that we get minimal strongly aperiodic SFTs on unimodular GBS groups.

We study a family of finitely generated residually finite small-cancellation groups. These groups are quotients of $F_2$ depending on a subset $S$ of positive integers. Varying $S$ yields continuously many groups up to quasi-isometry.

A theorem of Brady and Meier states that a right-angled Artin group is a duality group if and only if the flag complex of the defining graph is Cohen–Macaulay. We use this to give an example of a RAAG with the property that its outer automorphism group is not a virtual duality group. This gives a partial answer to a question of Vogtmann. In an appendix, Brück describes how he used a computer-assisted search to find further examples.

Let G be a Baumslag–Solitar group. We calculate the intersection $\gamma_{\omega}(G)$ of all terms of the lower central series of G. Using this, we show that $[\gamma_{\omega}(G),G]=\gamma_{\omega}(G)$, thus answering a question of Bardakov and Neschadim [1]. For any $c \in \mathbb{N}$, with $c \geq 2$, we show, by using Lie algebra methods, that the quotient group $\gamma_{c}(G)/\gamma_{c+1}(G)$ of the lower central series of G is finite.

The Frobenius–Schur indicators of characters in a real $2$-block with dihedral defect groups have been determined by Murray [‘Real subpairs and Frobenius–Schur indicators of characters in 2-blocks’, J. Algebra 322 (2009), 489–513]. We show that two infinite families described in his work do not exist and we construct examples for the remaining families. We further present some partial results on Frobenius–Schur indicators of characters in other tame blocks.

We describe a family of compactifications of the space of Bridgeland stability conditions of a triangulated category, following earlier work by Bapat, Deopurkar and Licata. We particularly consider the case of the 2-Calabi–Yau category of the $A_2$ quiver. The compactification is the closure of an embedding (depending on q) of the stability space into an infinite-dimensional projective space. In the $A_2$ case, the three-strand braid group $B_3$ acts on this closure. We describe two distinguished braid group orbits in the boundary, points of which can be identified with certain rational functions in q. Points in one of the orbits are exactly the q-deformed rational numbers recently introduced by Morier-Genoud and Ovsienko, while the other orbit gives a new q-deformation of the rational numbers. Specialising q to a positive real number, we obtain a complete description of the boundary of the compactification.

Given a Polish group G, let $E(G)$ be the right coset equivalence relation $G^{\omega }/c(G)$, where $c(G)$ is the group of all convergent sequences in G. The connected component of the identity of a Polish group G is denoted by $G_0$.

Let $G,H$ be locally compact abelian Polish groups. If $E(G)\leq _B E(H)$, then there is a continuous homomorphism $S:G_0\rightarrow H_0$ such that $\ker (S)$ is non-archimedean. The converse is also true when G is connected and compact.

For $n\in {\mathbb {N}}^+$, the partially ordered set $P(\omega )/\mbox {Fin}$ can be embedded into Borel equivalence relations between $E({\mathbb {R}}^n)$ and $E({\mathbb {T}}^n)$.

Answering a question by Chatterji–Druţu–Haglund, we prove that, for every locally compact group $G$, there exists a critical constant $p_G \in [0,\infty ]$ such that $G$ admits a continuous affine isometric action on an $L_p$ space ($0< p<\infty$) with unbounded orbits if and only if $p \geq p_G$. A similar result holds for the existence of proper continuous affine isometric actions on $L_p$ spaces. Using a representation of cohomology by harmonic cocycles, we also show that such unbounded orbits cannot occur when the linear part comes from a measure-preserving action, or more generally a state-preserving action on a von Neumann algebra and $p>2$. We also prove the stability of this critical constant $p_G$ under $L_p$ measure equivalence, answering a question of Fisher.

We consider a Deligne–Mumford stack $X$ which is the quotient of an affine scheme $\operatorname {Spec}A$ by the action of a finite group $G$ and show that the Balmer spectrum of the tensor triangulated category of perfect complexes on $X$ is homeomorphic to the space of homogeneous prime ideals in the group cohomology ring $H^*(G,A)$.

Let $\Gamma _{g}$ be the fundamental group of a closed connected orientable surface of genus $g\geq 2$. We develop a new method for integrating over the representation space $\mathbb {X}_{g,n}=\mathrm {Hom}(\Gamma _{g},S_{n})$, where $S_{n}$ is the symmetric group of permutations of $\{1,\ldots ,n\}$. Equivalently, this is the space of all vertex-labeled, n-sheeted covering spaces of the closed surface of genus g.

Given $\phi \in \mathbb {X}_{g,n}$ and $\gamma \in \Gamma _{g}$, we let $\mathsf {fix}_{\gamma }(\phi )$ be the number of fixed points of the permutation $\phi (\gamma )$. The function $\mathsf {fix}_{\gamma }$ is a special case of a natural family of functions on $\mathbb {X}_{g,n}$ called Wilson loops. Our new methodology leads to an asymptotic formula, as $n\to \infty $, for the expectation of $\mathsf {fix}_{\gamma }$ with respect to the uniform probability measure on $\mathbb {X}_{g,n}$, which is denoted by $\mathbb {E}_{g,n}[\mathsf {fix}_{\gamma }]$. We prove that if $\gamma \in \Gamma _{g}$ is not the identity and q is maximal such that $\gamma $ is a qth power in $\Gamma _{g}$, then

$$\begin{align*}\mathbb{E}_{g,n}\left[\mathsf{fix}_{\gamma}\right]=d(q)+O(n^{-1}) \end{align*}$$

as $n\to \infty $, where $d\left (q\right )$ is the number of divisors of q. Even the weaker corollary that $\mathbb {E}_{g,n}[\mathsf {fix}_{\gamma }]=o(n)$ as $n\to \infty $ is a new result of this paper. We also prove that $\mathbb {E}_{g,n}[\mathsf {fix}_{\gamma }]$ can be approximated to any order $O(n^{-M})$ by a polynomial in $n^{-1}$.

Let BG be the classifying space of an algebraic group G over the field ${\mathbb C}$ of complex numbers. There are smooth projective approximations X of $BG\times {\mathbb P}^{\infty}$, by Ekedahl. We compute a new stable birational invariant of X defined by the difference of two coniveau filtrations of X, by Benoist and Ottem. Hence we give many examples such that two coniveau filtrations are different.

We construct an action of the affine Hecke category on the principal block $\mathrm {Rep}_0(G_1T)$ of $G_1T$-modules where G is a connected reductive group over an algebraically closed field of characteristic $p> 0$, T a maximal torus of G and $G_1$ the Frobenius kernel of G. To define it, we define a new category with a Hecke action which is equivalent to the combinatorial category defined by Andersen-Jantzen-Soergel.

We study the arithmeticity of $\mathbb {C}$-Fuchsian subgroups of some nonarithmetic lattices constructed by Deraux et al. [‘New non-arithmetic complex hyperbolic lattices’, Invent. Math. 203 (2016), 681–771]. Our results give an answer to a question raised by Wells [Hybrid Subgroups of Complex Hyperbolic Isometries, Doctoral thesis, Arizona State University, 2019].

The Hopf–Galois structures admitted by a Galois extension of fields $ L/K $ with Galois group G correspond bijectively with certain subgroups of $ \mathrm{Perm}(G) $. We use a natural partition of the set of such subgroups to obtain a method for partitioning the set of corresponding Hopf–Galois structures, which we term ρ-conjugation. We study properties of this construction, with particular emphasis on the Hopf–Galois analogue of the Galois correspondence, the connection with skew left braces, and applications to questions of integral module structure in extensions of local or global fields. In particular, we show that the number of distinct ρ-conjugates of a given Hopf–Galois structure is determined by the corresponding skew left brace, and that if $ H, H^{\prime} $ are Hopf algebras giving ρ-conjugate Hopf–Galois structures on a Galois extension of local or global fields $ L/K $ then an ambiguous ideal $ \mathfrak{B} $ of L is free over its associated order in H if and only if it is free over its associated order in Hʹ. We exhibit a variety of examples arising from interactions with existing constructions in the literature.

Let $G$ be a reductive group over an algebraically closed field $k$ of separably good characteristic $p>0$ for $G$. Under these assumptions, a Springer isomorphism $\phi : \mathcal {N}_{\mathrm {red}}(\mathfrak {g}) \rightarrow \mathcal {V}_{\mathrm {red}}(G)$ from the nilpotent scheme of $\mathfrak {g}$ to the unipotent scheme of $G$ always exists and allows one to integrate any $p$-nilpotent element of $\mathfrak {g}$ into a unipotent element of $G$. One should wonder whether such a punctual integration can lead to an integration of restricted $p$-nil $p$-subalgebras of $\mathfrak {g}= \operatorname {Lie}(G)$. We provide a counter-example of the existence of such an integration in general, as well as criteria to integrate some restricted $p$-nil $p$-subalgebras of $\mathfrak {g}$ (that are maximal in a certain sense). This requires the generalisation of the notion of infinitesimal saturation first introduced by Deligne and the extension of one of his theorems on infinitesimally saturated subgroups of $G$ to the previously mentioned framework.

We call a semigroup right perfect if every object in the category of unitary right acts over that semigroup has a projective cover. In this paper, we generalize results about right perfect monoids to the case of semigroups. In our main theorem, we will give nine conditions equivalent to right perfectness of a factorizable semigroup. We also prove that right perfectness is a Morita invariant for factorizable semigroups.

Skew left braces arise naturally from the study of non-degenerate set-theoretic solutions of the Yang–Baxter equation. To understand the algebraic structure of skew left braces, a study of the decomposition into minimal substructures is relevant. We introduce chief series and prove a strengthened form of the Jordan–Hölder theorem for finite skew left braces. A characterization of right nilpotency and an application to multipermutation solutions are also given.