Given groups $A$ and $B$, what is the minimal commutator length of the 2020th (for instance) power of an element $g\in A*B$ not conjugate to elements of the free factors? The exhaustive answer to this question is still unknown, but we can give an almost answer: this minimum is one of two numbers (simply depending on $A$ and $B$). Other similar problems are also considered.

We improve on and generalize a 1960 result of Maltsev. For a field F, we denote by $H(F)$ the Heisenberg group with entries in F. Maltsev showed that there is a copy of F defined in $H(F)$ , using existential formulas with an arbitrary non-commuting pair of elements as parameters. We show that F is interpreted in $H(F)$ using computable $\Sigma _1$ formulas with no parameters. We give two proofs. The first is an existence proof, relying on a result of Harrison-Trainor, Melnikov, R. Miller, and Montalbán. This proof allows the possibility that the elements of F are represented by tuples in $H(F)$ of no fixed arity. The second proof is direct, giving explicit finitary existential formulas that define the interpretation, with elements of F represented by triples in $H(F)$ . Looking at what was used to arrive at this parameter-free interpretation of F in $H(F)$ , we give general conditions sufficient to eliminate parameters from interpretations.

Let $G$ be a primitive permutation group of degree $n$ with nonabelian socle, and let $k(G)$ be the number of conjugacy classes of $G$. We prove that either $k(G)< n/2$ and $k(G)=o(n)$ as $n\rightarrow \infty$, or $G$ belongs to explicit families of examples.

We study the free metabelian group $M(2,n)$ of prime power exponent n on two generators by means of invariants $M(2,n)'\to \mathbb {Z}_n$ that we construct from colorings of the squares in the integer grid $\mathbb {R} \times \mathbb {Z} \cup \mathbb {Z} \times \mathbb {R}$ . In particular, we improve bounds found by Newman for the order of $M(2,2^k)$ . We study identities in $M(2,n)$ , which give information about identities in the Burnside group $B(2,n)$ and the restricted Burnside group $R(2,n)$ .

We show that the Specht ideal of a two-rowed partition is perfect over an arbitrary field, provided that the characteristic is either zero or bounded below by the size of the second row of the partition, and we show this lower bound is tight. We also establish perfection and other properties of certain variants of Specht ideals, and find a surprising connection to the weak Lefschetz property. Our results, in particular, give a self-contained proof of Cohen–Macaulayness of certain h-equals sets, a result previously obtained by Etingof–Gorsky–Losev over the complex numbers using rational Cherednik algebras.

Let G be a simple complex algebraic group, and let $K \subset G$ be a reductive subgroup such that the coordinate ring of $G/K$ is a multiplicity-free G-module. We consider the G-algebra structure of $\mathbb C[G/K]$ and study the decomposition into irreducible summands of the product of irreducible G-submodules in $\mathbb C[G/K]$ . When the spherical roots of $G/K$ generate a root system of type $\mathsf A$ , we propose a conjectural decomposition rule, which relies on a conjecture of Stanley on the multiplication of Jack symmetric functions. With the exception of one case, we show that the rule holds true whenever the root system generated by the spherical roots of $G/K$ is a direct sum of subsystems of rank 1.

We study the number of ways of factoring elements in the complex reflection groups $G(r,s,n)$ as products of reflections. We prove a result that compares factorization numbers in $G(r,s,n)$ to those in the symmetric group $S_n$ , and we use this comparison, along with the Ekedahl, Lando, Shapiro, and Vainshtein (ELSV) formula, to deduce a polynomial structure for factorizations in $G(r,s,n)$ .

Let $m\leqslant n\in \mathbb {N}$, and $G\leqslant \operatorname {Sym}(m)$ and $H\leqslant \operatorname {Sym}(n)$. In this article, we find conditions enabling embeddings between the symmetric R. Thompson groups ${V_m(G)}$ and ${V_n(H)}$. When $n\equiv 1 \mod (m-1)$, and under some other technical conditions, we find an embedding of ${V_n(H)}$ into ${V_m(G)}$ via topological conjugation. With the same modular condition, we also generalize a purely algebraic construction of Birget from 2019 to find a group $H\leqslant \operatorname {Sym}(n)$ and an embedding of ${V_m(G)}$ into ${V_n(H)}$.

Given an integer $g>2$ , we state necessary and sufficient conditions for a finite Abelian group to act as a group of automorphisms of some compact nonorientable Riemann surface of genus g. This result provides a new method to obtain the symmetric cross-cap number of Abelian groups. We also compute the least symmetric cross-cap number of Abelian groups of a given order and solve the maximum order problem for Abelian groups acting on nonorientable Riemann surfaces.

Let $F$ be a non-archimedean local field of residual characteristic $p \neq 2$. Let $G$ be a (connected) reductive group over $F$ that splits over a tamely ramified field extension of $F$. We revisit Yu's construction of smooth complex representations of $G(F)$ from a slightly different perspective and provide a proof that the resulting representations are supercuspidal. We also provide a counterexample to Proposition 14.1 and Theorem 14.2 in Yu [Construction of tame supercuspidal representations, J. Amer. Math. Soc. 14 (2001), 579–622], whose proofs relied on a typo in a reference.

We fix an error on a $3$ -cocycle in the original version of the paper ‘Endoscopy for Hecke categories, character sheaves and representations’. We give the corrected statements of the main results.

A classical theorem of Frucht states that any finite group appears as the automorphism group of a finite graph. In the quantum setting, the problem is to understand the structure of the compact quantum groups which can appear as quantum automorphism groups of finite graphs. We discuss here this question, notably with a number of negative results.

We prove that the structure group of any Albert algebra over an arbitrary field is R-trivial. This implies the Tits–Weiss conjecture for Albert algebras and the Kneser–Tits conjecture for isotropic groups of type $\mathrm {E}_{7,1}^{78}, \mathrm {E}_{8,2}^{78}$ . As a further corollary, we show that some standard conjectures on the groups of R-equivalence classes in algebraic groups and the norm principle are true for strongly inner forms of type $^1\mathrm {E}_6$ .

Let $K$ be a subgroup of a finite group $G$. The probability that an element of $G$ commutes with an element of $K$ is denoted by $Pr(K,G)$. Assume that $Pr(K,G)\geq \epsilon$ for some fixed $\epsilon >0$. We show that there is a normal subgroup $T\leq G$ and a subgroup $B\leq K$ such that the indices $[G:T]$ and $[K:B]$ and the order of the commutator subgroup $[T,B]$ are $\epsilon$-bounded. This extends the well-known theorem, due to P. M. Neumann, that covers the case where $K=G$. We deduce a number of corollaries of this result. A typical application is that if $K$ is the generalized Fitting subgroup $F^{*}(G)$ then $G$ has a class-2-nilpotent normal subgroup $R$ such that both the index $[G:R]$ and the order of the commutator subgroup $[R,R]$ are $\epsilon$-bounded. In the same spirit we consider the cases where $K$ is a term of the lower central series of $G$, or a Sylow subgroup, etc.

We show that, given a compact minimal system $(X,g)$ and an element h of the topological full group $\tau [g]$ of g, the infinite orbits of h admit a locally constant orientation with respect to the orbits of g. We use this to obtain a clopen partition of $(X,G)$ into minimal and periodic parts, where G is any virtually polycyclic subgroup of $\tau [g]$ . We also use the orientation of orbits to give a refinement of the index map and to describe the role in $\tau [g]$ of the submonoid generated by the induced transformations of g. Finally, we consider the problem, given a homeomorphism h of the Cantor space X, of determining whether or not there exists a minimal homeomorphism g of X such that $h \in \tau [g]$ .

A Grigorchuk–Gupta–Sidki (GGS)-group is a subgroup of the automorphism group of the p-regular rooted tree for an odd prime p, generated by one rooted automorphism and one directed automorphism. Pervova proved that all torsion GGS-groups do not have maximal subgroups of infinite index. Here, we extend the result to nontorsion GGS-groups, which include the weakly regular branch, but not branch, GGS-group.

We observe a fundamental relationship between Steenrod operations and the Artin–Schreier morphism. We use Steenrod's construction, together with some new geometry related to the affine Grassmannian, to prove that the quantum Coulomb branch is a Frobenius-constant quantization. We also demonstrate the corresponding result for the $K$-theoretic version of the quantum Coulomb branch. At the end of the paper, we investigate what our ideas produce on the categorical level. We find that they yield, after a little fiddling, a construction which corresponds, under the geometric Satake equivalence, to the Frobenius twist functor for representations of the Langlands dual group. We also describe the unfiddled answer, conditional on a conjectural ‘modular derived Satake’, and, though it is more complicated to state, it is in our opinion just as neat and even more compelling.

In a seminal paper, Stallings introduced folding of morphisms of graphs. One consequence of folding is the representation of finitely-generated subgroups of a finite-rank free group as immersions of finite graphs. Stallings’s methods allow one to construct this representation algorithmically, giving effective, algorithmic answers and proofs to classical questions about subgroups of free groups. Recently Dani–Levcovitz used Stallings-like methods to study subgroups of right-angled Coxeter groups, which act geometrically on CAT(0) cube complexes. In this paper we extend their techniques to fundamental groups of non-positively curved cube complexes.

We prove that a minimal second countable ample groupoid has dynamical comparison if and only if its type semigroup is almost unperforated. Moreover, we investigate to what extent a not necessarily minimal almost finite groupoid has an almost unperforated type semigroup. Finally, we build a bridge between coarse geometry and topological dynamics by characterizing almost finiteness of the coarse groupoid in terms of a new coarsely invariant property for metric spaces, which might be of independent interest in coarse geometry. As a consequence, we are able to construct new examples of almost finite principal groupoids lacking other desirable properties, such as amenability or even a-T-menability. This behaviour is in stark contrast to the case of principal transformation groupoids associated to group actions.