We extend earlier work relating asphericity and Euler characteristics for finite complexes whose fundamental groups have nontrivial torsion free abelian normal subgroups. In particular a finitely presentable group which has a nontrivial elementary amenable subgroup whose finite subgroups have bounded order and with no nontrivial finite normal subgroup must have deficiency at most 1, and if it has a presentation of deficiency 1 then the corresponding 2-complex is aspherical. Similarly if the fundamental group of a closed 4-manifold with Euler characteristic 0 is virtually torsion free and elementary amenable then it either has 2 ends or is virtually an extension of Z by a subgroup of Q, or the manifold is asphencal and the group is virtually poly- Z of Hirsch length 4.

The aim of this paper is to prove some embedding theorems for groups with Černikov conjugacy classes. Moreover a characterization of periodic central-by-Černikov groups is given.

This paper classifies all finite connected 4- and 5-arc-transitive cubic graphs that contain circuits of length less than or equal to 11, or of length 13, and some of those graphs with circuits of length 12.

Let G be a finitely generated group and let R be a commutative ring, regarded as a G-module with G acting trivially. We shall determine when the cup product of two elements of H1(G, R) is zero. Our method will use the interpretation of H2(G, R) as extensions of G by R. This will give an alternative demonstration of results of Hillman and Würfel.

A version of the Dade-Cline equivalence from Clifford theory is proved for non-normal subgroups of a finite group in the context of a synthesis of a number of equivalences that arise in the representation theory of groups and algebras.

Let G be a (not necessarily finite) group and ρ a finite dimensional faithful irreducible representation of G over an arbitrary field; write ρ¯ for ρ viewed as a projective representation. Suppose that ρ is not induced (from any proper subgroup) and that ρ¯ is not a tensor product (of projective representations of dimension greater than 1). Let K be a noncentral subgroup which centralizes all its conjugates in G except perhaps itself, write H for the normalizer of K in G, and suppose that some irreducible constituent, σ say, of the restriction p↓K is absolutely irreducible. It is proved that then (ρ is absolutely irreducible and) ρ¯ is tensor induced from a projective representation of H, namely from a tensor factor π of ρ¯↓H such that π↓K = σ¯ and ker π is the centralizer of K in G.

We investigate the identities which hold in the associated Lie rings of groups of prime exponent. The multilinear identities which hold in these Lie rings are known, and it is conjectured that all the identities which hold in these Lie rings are consequences of multilinear ones. This is known to be the case for the associated Lie rings of two generator groups of exponent 5, and we provide some additional avidence for the conjecture by confirming that it also holds true for the associated Lie rings of three generator groups of exponent five.

For a ZG-lattice A, the nth partial free Euler characteristic εn(A) is defined as the infimum of all where F* varies over all free resolutions of A. It is shown that there exists a stably free resolution E* of A which realises εn(A) for all n≥0 and that the function n → εn(A) is ultimately polynomial no residue classes. The existence of E* is established with the help of new invariants σn(A) of A. These are elements in certain image groups of the projective class group of ZG. When ZG allows cancellation, E* is a minimal free resolution and is essentially unique. When A is periodic, E* is ultimately periodic of period a multiple of the projective period of A.

In the terminology of Birget and Rhodes [3], an expansion is a functor F from the category of semigroups into some special category of semigroups such that there is a natural transformation η from F to the identity functor for which ηs is surjective for every semigroup S. The three expansions introduced in [3] have proved to be of particular interest when applied to groups. In fact, as shown in [4], Ĝ(2) are isomorphic for any group G, is an E-unitary inverse monoid and the kernel of the homomorphism ηG is the minimum group congruence on . Furthermore, if G is the free group on A, then the “cut-down to generators” which is a subsemigroup of is the free inverse semigroup on A. Essentially the same result was given by Margolis and Pin [12].

The following question is discussed and evidence for and against it is advanced: is it true that if F is an arbitrary finite subgroup of an arbitrary non-linear simple locally finite group G, then CG(F) is infinite? The following points to an affirmative answer.

Theorem A. Let F be an arbitrary finite subgroup of a non-linear simple locally finite group G. Then there exist subgroups D ◃ C ≤ G such that F centralizes C/D, F∩C ≤ D, and C/D is a direct product of finite alternating groups of unbounded orders. In particular, F centralizes an infinite section of G.

Theorem A is deduced from a “local” version, namely

Theorem B. There exists an integer valued function f(n, r) with the following properties. Let H be a finite group of order at most n, and suppose that H ≤ S, where S is either an alternating group of degree at least f = f(n, r) or a finite simple classical group whose natural projective representation has degree at least f. Then there exist subgroups D ◃ C ≤ S such that (i) [H, C] ≤ D, (ii) H ∩ C ≤ D, (iii) C/D ≅ Alt(r), (iv) D = 1 if S is alternating, and D is a p-group of class at most 2 and exponent dividing p2 if S is a classical group over a field of characteristic p.

The natural “local version” of our main question is however definitely false.

Proposition C. Let p be a given prime. Then there exists a finite group H that can be embedded in infinitely many groups PSL(n, p) as a subgroup with trivial centralizer.

Let G be a connected reductive linear algebraic group over the complex numbers. For any element A of the Lie algebra of G, there is an action of the Weyl group W on the cohomology Hi(BA) of the subvariety BA (see below for the definition) of the flag variety of G. We study this action and prove an inequality for the multiplicity of the Weyl group representations which occur ((4.8) below). This involves geometric data. This inequality is applied to determine the multiplicity of the reflection representation of W when A is a nilpotent element of “parabolic type”. In particular this multiplicity is related to the geometry of the corresponding hyperplane complement.

The known characterization of the Mathieu group M12 by the structure of the centralizer of a 2-central involution is based on the application of the theory of exceptional characters and uses in addition a block theoretic result which asserts that a simple group of order |M12| is isomorphic to M12. The details of the proof of the latter result had never been published. We show here that M12 can be handled in a completely elementary and group theoretical way.

We discuss some general properties and limitations of the concept of outer Fitting pairs introduced earlier by the author. We describe an outer Fitting pair as a co-cone in the category of what we call outer groups (roughly speaking the category of groups modulo inner automorphisms). It is shown that generally no universal outer Fitting pair exists, whence this category is not co-complete. Additionally it is shown that if the target group of an outer Fitting pair is finite, then the much more amenable concept of normal Fitting pairs (that is, co-cones in the category of groups) applies.

A completely regular semigroup is a semigroup which is a union of groups. The class CR of completely regular semigroups forms a variety. On the lattice L (CR) of completely regular semigroup varieties we define two closure operations which induce complete congruences. The consideration of a third complete congruence on L (CR) yields a subdirect decomposition of L (CR). Using these results we show that L (CR) is arguesian. This confirms the (tacit) conjecture that L (CR) is modular.

The structure of semigroups with atomistic congruence lattices (that is, each congruence is the supremum of the atoms it contains) is studied. For the weakly reductive case the problem of describing the structure of such semigroups is solved up to simple and congruence free semigroups, respectively. As applications, all commutative, finite, completely semisimple semigroups, respectively, with atomistic congruence lattices are described.

The class CR of completely regular semigroups (unions of groups or algebras with the associative binary operation of multiplication and the unary operation of inversion subject to the laws x = xx-1, (x−1)-1 = x and xx-1 = x-1x) is a variety. Among the important subclasses of CR are the classes M of monoids and I of idempotent generated members. For each C ∈ {I, M}, there are associated mappings ν → ν ∩ C and ν → (Ν ∩ C), the variety generated by ν ∩ C. The lattice theoretic properties of these mappings and the interactions between these mappings are studied.

Let G be a finite group of even order coprime to 3. If G admits a fixed-point-free automorphism group isomorphic to the symmetric group on three letters, then we prove that G is soluble.

We consider the influence on a group G of the condition that every infinite set of cyclic subgroups of G contains a pair that permute and prove (Theorem 1) that finitely generated soluble groups with this condition are centre-by-finite, and (Theorem 2) that torsion free groups satisfying the condition are abelian.

Two subgroups ME(G) and MI(G) of the Schur multiplier M(G) of a finite group G are introduced: ME(G) contains those cohomology classes [α] of M(G) for which every element of G is α-regular, and MI(G) consists of those cohomology classes of M(G) which contain a G-invariant cocycle. It is then shown that under suitable circumstances, such as when G has odd order, that each element of MI(G) can be expressed as the product of an element of ME(G) and an element of the image of the inflation homomorphism from M(G/G′) into M(G).

Every invertible n-by-n matrix over a ring R satisfying the first Bass stable range condition is the product of n simple automorphisms, and there are invertible matrices which cannot be written as the products of a smaller number of simple automorphisms. This generalizes results of Ellers on division rings and local rings.