Let $H\le F$ be two finitely generated free groups. Given $g\in F$, we study the ideal $\mathfrak I_g$ of equations for g with coefficients in H, i.e. the elements $w(x)\in H*\langle x\rangle$ such that $w(g)=1$ in F. The ideal $\mathfrak I_g$ is a normal subgroup of $H*\langle x\rangle$, and it’s possible to algorithmically compute a finite normal generating set for $\mathfrak I_g$; we give a description of one such algorithm, based on Stallings folding operations. We provide an algorithm to find an equation in w(x)\in$\mathfrak I_g$ with minimum degree, i.e.  such that its cyclic reduction contains the minimum possible number of occurrences of x and x−1; this answers a question of A. Rosenmann and E. Ventura. More generally, we show how to algorithmically compute the set Dg of all integers d such that $\mathfrak I_g$ contains equations of degree d; we show that Dg coincides, up to a finite set, with either $\mathbb N$ or $2\mathbb N$. Finally, we provide examples to illustrate the techniques introduced in this paper. We discuss the case where ${\text{rank}}(H)=1$. We prove that both kinds of sets Dg can actually occur. We show that the equations of minimum possible degree aren’t in general enough to generate the whole ideal $\mathfrak I_g$ as a normal subgroup.

We show that when a finitely presented Bestvina–Brady group splits as an amalgamated product over a subgroup $H$, its defining graph contains an induced separating subgraph whose associated Bestvina–Brady group is contained in a conjugate of $H$.

Given a group G acting faithfully on a set S, we characterize precisely when the twisted Brin–Thompson group SVG is finitely presented. The answer is that SVG is finitely presented if and only if we have the following: G is finitely presented, the action of G on S has finitely many orbits of two-element subsets of S, and the stabilizer in G of any element of S is finitely generated. Since twisted Brin–Thompson groups are simple, a consequence is that any subgroup of a group admitting an action as above satisfies the Boone–Higman conjecture. In the course of proving this, we also establish a sufficient condition for a group acting cocompactly on a simply connected complex to be finitely presented, even if certain edge stabilizers are not finitely generated, which may be of independent interest.

Nilpotency concepts for skew braces are among the main tools with which we are nowadays classifying certain special solutions of the Yang–Baxter equation, a consistency equation that plays a relevant role in quantum statistical mechanics and in many areas of mathematics. In this context, two relevant questions have been raised in F. Cedó, A. Smoktunowicz and L. Vendramin (Skew left braces of nilpotent type. Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. (3) 118 (2019), 1367–1392) (see questions 2.34 and 2.35) concerning right- and central nilpotency. The aim of this short note is to give a negative answer to both questions: thus, we show that a finite strong-nil brace B need not be right-nilpotent. On a positive note, we show that there is one (and only one, by our examples) special case of the previous questions that actually holds. In fact, we show that if B is a skew brace of nilpotent type and $b\ \ast \ b=0$ for all $b\in B$, then B is centrally nilpotent.

We obtain an adaptation of Dade’s Conjecture and Späth’s Character Triple Conjecture to unipotent characters of simple, simply connected finite reductive groups of type $\mathbf {A}$, $\mathbf {B}$ and $\mathbf {C}$. In particular, this gives a precise formula for counting the number of unipotent characters of each defect d in any Brauer $\ell $-block B in terms of local invariants associated to e-local structures. This provides a geometric version of the local-global principle in representation theory of finite groups. A key ingredient in our proof is the construction of certain parametrisations of unipotent generalised Harish-Chandra series that are compatible with isomorphisms of character triples.

We continue our study of exponent semigroups of rational matrices. Our main result is that the matricial dimension of a numerical semigroup is at most its multiplicity (the least generator), greatly improving upon the previous upper bound (the conductor). For many numerical semigroups, including all symmetric numerical semigroups, our upper bound is tight. Our construction uses combinatorially structured matrices and is parametrised by Kunz coordinates, which are central to enumerative problems in the study of numerical semigroups.

In this paper, we establish a definitive result which almost completely closes the problem of bounded elementary generation for Chevalley groups of rank $\ge 2$ over arbitrary Dedekind rings R of arithmetic type, with uniform bounds. Namely, we show that for every reduced irreducible root system $\Phi $ of rank $\ge 2$, there exists a universal bound $L=L(\Phi )$ such that the simply connected Chevalley groups $G(\Phi ,R)$ have elementary width $\le L$ for all Dedekind rings of arithmetic type R.

We establish a McKay correspondence for finite and linearly reductive subgroup schemes of ${\mathbf {SL}}_2$ in positive characteristic. As an application, we obtain a McKay correspondence for all rational double point singularities in characteristic $p\geq 7$. We discuss linearly reductive quotient singularities and canonical lifts over the ring of Witt vectors. In dimension 2, we establish simultaneous resolutions of singularities of these canonical lifts via G-Hilbert schemes. In the appendix, we discuss several approaches towards the notion of conjugacy classes for finite group schemes: This is an ingredient in McKay correspondences, but also of independent interest.

To any free group automorphism, we associate a universal (cone of) limit tree(s) with three defining properties: first, the tree has a minimal isometric action of the free group with trivial arc stabilizers; second, there is a unique expanding dilation of the tree that represents the free group automorphism; and finally, the loxodromic elements are exactly the elements that weakly limit to dominating attracting laminations under forward iteration by the automorphism. So the action on the tree detects the automorphism’s dominating exponential dynamics.

As a corollary, our previously constructed limit pretree that detects the exponential dynamics is canonical. We also characterize all very small trees that admit an expanding homothety representing a given automorphism. In the appendix, we prove a variation of Feighn–Handel’s recognition theorem for atoroidal outer automorphisms.

For positive integers k and n, the shuffle group $G_{k,kn}$ is generated by the $k!$ permutations of a deck of $kn$ cards performed by cutting the deck into k piles with n cards in each pile, and then perfectly interleaving these cards following a certain permutation of the k piles. For $k=2$, the shuffle group $G_{2,2n}$ was determined by Diaconis, Graham and Kantor in 1983. The Shuffle Group Conjecture states that, for general k, the shuffle group $G_{k,kn}$ contains $\mathrm {A}_{kn}$ whenever $k\notin \{2,4\}$ and n is not a power of k. In particular, the conjecture in the case $k=3$ was posed by Medvedoff and Morrison in 1987. The only values of k for which the Shuffle Group Conjecture has been confirmed so far are powers of $2$, due to recent work of Amarra, Morgan and Praeger based on Classification of Finite Simple Groups. In this paper, we confirm the Shuffle Group Conjecture for all cases using results on $2$-transitive groups and elements of large fixed point ratio in primitive groups.

In this paper, we develop two new homological invariants called relative dominant dimension with respect to a module and relative codominant dimension with respect to a module. Among the applications are precise connections between Ringel duality, split quasi-hereditary covers and double centralizer properties, constructions of split quasi-hereditary covers of quotients of Iwahori-Hecke algebras using Ringel duality of q-Schur algebras and a new proof for Ringel self-duality of the blocks of the Bernstein-Gelfand-Gelfand category $\mathcal {O}$. These homological invariants are studied over Noetherian algebras which are finitely generated and projective as a module over the ground ring. They are shown to behave nicely under change of rings techniques.

We investigate neighbourhood sizes in the enhanced power graph (also known as the cyclic graph) associated with a finite group. In particular, we characterise finite p-groups with the smallest maximum size for neighbourhoods of a nontrivial element in its enhanced power graph.

We prove a result that relates the number of homomorphisms from the fundamental group of a compact nonorientable surface to a finite group G, where conjugacy classes of the boundary components of the surface must map to prescribed conjugacy classes in G, to a sum over values of irreducible characters of G weighted by Frobenius-Schur multipliers. The proof is structured so that the corresponding results for closed and possibly orientable surfaces, as well as some generalizations, are derived using the same methods. We then apply these results to the specific case of the symmetric group.

The monogenic free inverse semigroup $FI_1$ is not finitely presented as a semigroup due to the classic result by Schein (1975). We extend this result and prove that a finitely generated subsemigroup of $FI_1$ is finitely presented if and only if it contains only finitely many idempotents. As a consequence, we derive that an inverse subsemigroup of $FI_1$ is finitely presented as a semigroup if and only if it is a finite semilattice.

Assuming Stanley’s P-partitions conjecture holds, the regular Schur labeled skew shape posets are precisely the finite posets P with underlying set $\{1, 2, \ldots , |P|\}$ such that the P-partition generating function is symmetric and the set of linear extensions of P, denoted $\Sigma _L(P)$, is a left weak Bruhat interval in the symmetric group $\mathfrak {S}_{|P|}$. We describe the permutations in $\Sigma _L(P)$ in terms of reading words of standard Young tableaux when P is a regular Schur labeled skew shape poset, and classify $\Sigma _L(P)$’s up to descent-preserving isomorphism as P ranges over regular Schur labeled skew shape posets. The results obtained are then applied to classify the $0$-Hecke modules $\mathsf {M}_P$ associated with regular Schur labeled skew shape posets P up to isomorphism. Then we characterize regular Schur labeled skew shape posets as the finite posets P whose linear extensions form a dual plactic-closed subset of $\mathfrak {S}_{|P|}$. Using this characterization, we construct distinguished filtrations of $\mathsf {M}_P$ with respect to the Schur basis when P is a regular Schur labeled skew shape poset. Further issues concerned with the classification and decomposition of the $0$-Hecke modules $\mathsf {M}_P$ are also discussed.

In this paper, the authors introduce a new notion called the quantum wreath product, which is the algebra $B \wr _Q \mathcal {H}(d)$ produced from a given algebra B, a positive integer d and a choice $Q=(R,S,\rho ,\sigma )$ of parameters. Important examples that arise from our construction include many variants of the Hecke algebras, such as the Ariki–Koike algebras, the affine Hecke algebras and their degenerate version, Wan–Wang’s wreath Hecke algebras, Rosso–Savage’s (affine) Frobenius Hecke algebras, Kleshchev–Muth’s affine zigzag algebras and the Hu algebra that quantizes the wreath product $\Sigma _m \wr \Sigma _2$ between symmetric groups.

In the first part of the paper, the authors develop a structure theory for the quantum wreath products. Necessary and sufficient conditions for these algebras to afford a basis of suitable size are obtained. Furthermore, a Schur–Weyl duality is established via a splitting lemma and mild assumptions on the base algebra B. Our uniform approach encompasses many known results which were proved in a case by case manner. The second part of the paper involves the problem of constructing natural subalgebras of Hecke algebras that arise from wreath products. Moreover, a bar-invariant basis of the Hu algebra via an explicit formula for its extra generator is also described.

In this paper, we study the universal lifting spaces of local Galois representations valued in arbitrary reductive group schemes when $\ell \neq p$. In particular, under certain technical conditions applicable to any root datum, we construct a canonical smooth component in such spaces, generalizing the minimally ramified deformation condition previously studied for classical groups. Our methods involve extending the notion of isotypic decomposition for a $\operatorname {\mathrm {GL}}_n$-valued representation to general reductive group schemes. To deal with certain scheme-theoretic issues coming from this notion, we are led to a detailed study of certain families of disconnected reductive groups, which we call weakly reductive group schemes. Our work can be used to produce geometric lifts for global Galois representations, and we illustrate this for $\mathrm {G}_2$-valued representations.

We study the planar 3-colorablesubgroup $\mathcal{E}$ of Thompson’s group F and its even part ${\mathcal{E}_{\rm EVEN}}$. The latter is obtained by cutting $\mathcal{E}$ with a finite index subgroup of F isomorphic to F, namely the rectangular subgroup $K_{(2,2)}$. We show that the even part ${\mathcal{E}_{\rm EVEN}}$ of the planar 3-colorable subgroup admits a description in terms of stabilisers of suitable subsets of dyadic rationals. As a consequence ${\mathcal{E}_{\rm EVEN}}$ is closed in the sense of Golan and Sapir. We then study three quasi-regular representations associated with ${\mathcal{E}_{\rm EVEN}}$: two are shown to be irreducible and one to be reducible.

Given a connected reductive algebraic group G over an algebraically closed field, we investigate the Picard group of the moduli stack of principal G-bundles over an arbitrary family of smooth curves.

In this paper, we study random walks on groups that contain superlinear-divergent geodesics, in the line of thoughts of Goldsborough and Sisto. The existence of a superlinear-divergent geodesic is a quasi-isometry invariant which allows us to execute Gouëzel’s pivoting technique. We develop the theory of superlinear divergence and establish a central limit theorem for random walks on these groups.