Given a cardinal $\lambda $ with $\lambda =\lambda ^{\aleph _0}$ , we show that there is a field of cardinality $\lambda $ whose automorphism group is a free group of rank $2^\lambda $ . In the proof of this statement, we develop general techniques that enable us to realize certain groups as the automorphism group of structures of a given cardinality. They allow us to show that analogues of this result hold for free objects in various varieties of groups. For example, the free abelian group of rank $2^\lambda $ is the automorphism group of a field of cardinality $\lambda $ whenever $\lambda $ is a cardinal with $\lambda =\lambda ^{\aleph _0}$ . Moreover, we apply these techniques to show that consistently the assumption that $\lambda =\lambda ^{\aleph _0}$ is not necessary for the existence of a field of cardinality $\lambda $ whose automorphism group is a free group of rank $2^\lambda $ . Finally, we use them to prove that the existence of a cardinal $\lambda $ of uncountable cofinality with the property that there is no field of cardinality $\lambda $ whose automorphism group is a free group of rank greater than $\lambda $ implies the existence of large cardinals in certain inner models of set theory.

The problem of finding a nontrivial factor of a polynomial $f(x)$ over a finite field ${\mathbb{F}}_q$ has many known efficient, but randomized, algorithms. The deterministic complexity of this problem is a famous open question even assuming the generalized Riemann hypothesis (GRH). In this work we improve the state of the art by focusing on prime degree polynomials; let $n$ be the degree. If $(n-1)$ has a‘large’ $r$ -smooth divisor $s$ , then we find a nontrivial factor of $f(x)$ in deterministic $\mbox{poly}(n^r,\log q)$ time, assuming GRH and that $s=\Omega (\sqrt{n/2^r})$ . Thus, for $r=O(1)$ our algorithm is polynomial time. Further, for $r=\Omega (\log \log n)$ there are infinitely many prime degrees $n$ for which our algorithm is applicable and better than the best known, assuming GRH. Our methods build on the algebraic-combinatorial framework of $m$ -schemes initiated by Ivanyos, Karpinski and Saxena (ISSAC 2009). We show that the $m$ -scheme on $n$ points, implicitly appearing in our factoring algorithm, has an exceptional structure, leading us to the improved time complexity. Our structure theorem proves the existence of small intersection numbers in any association scheme that has many relations, and roughly equal valencies and indistinguishing numbers.

It has been a long-standing question whether every amenable operator algebra is isomorphic to a (necessarily nuclear) $\mathrm{C}^*$ -algebra. In this note, we give a nonseparable counterexample. Finding out whether a separable counterexample exists remains an open problem. We also initiate a general study of unitarizability of representations of amenable groups in $\mathrm{C}^*$ -algebras and show that our method cannot produce a separable counterexample.

We prove that if $y''=f(y,y',t,\alpha ,\beta ,\ldots)$ is a generic Painlevé equation from among the classes II, IV and V, and if $y_1,\ldots,y_n$ are distinct solutions, then $\mathrm{tr.deg}(\mathbb{C}(t)(y_1,y'_1,\ldots,y_n,y'_n)/\mathbb{C}(t))=2n$. (This was proved by Nishioka for the single equation $P_{{\rm I}}$.) For generic Painlevé III and VI, we have a slightly weaker result: $\omega $-categoricity (in the sense of model theory) of the solution space, as described below. The results confirm old beliefs about the Painlevé transcendents.

We prove that groups definable in o-minimal structures have Cartan subgroups, and only finitely many conjugacy classes of such subgroups. We also delineate with precision how these subgroups cover the ambient group.

We explain how the André–Oort conjecture for a general Shimura variety can be deduced from the hyperbolic Ax–Lindemann conjecture, a good lower bound for Galois orbits of special points and the definability, in the $o$ -minimal structure ${ \mathbb{R} }_{\mathrm{an} , \mathrm{exp} } $ , of the restriction to a fundamental set of the uniformizing map of a Shimura variety. These ingredients are known in some important cases. As a consequence a proof of the André–Oort conjecture for projective special subvarieties of ${ \mathcal{A} }_{6}^{N} $ for an arbitrary integer $N$ is given.

We prove a “special point” result for products of elliptic modular surfaces, elliptic curves, multiplicative groups and complex lines, and deduce a result about vanishing linear combinations of singular moduli and roots of unity.

We study the consequences of stationary and semi-stationary set reflection. We show that the semi-stationary reflection principle implies the Singular Cardinal Hypothesis, the failure of the weak square principle, etc. We also consider two cardinal tree properties introduced recently by Weiss, and prove that they follow from stationary and semi-stationary set reflection augmented with a weak form of Martin’s Axiom. We also show that there are some differences between the two reflection principles, which suggests that stationary set reflection is analogous to supercompactness, whereas semi-stationary set reflection is analogous to strong compactness.

We address the question of the dualizability of nilpotent Mal’cev algebras, showing that nilpotent finite Mal’cev algebras with a nonabelian supernilpotent congruence are inherently nondualizable. In particular, finite nilpotent nonabelian Mal’cev algebras of finite type are nondualizable if they are direct products of algebras of prime power order. We show that these results cannot be generalized to nilpotent algebras by giving an example of a group expansion of infinite type that is nilpotent and nonabelian, but dualizable. To our knowledge this is the first construction of a nonabelian nilpotent dualizable algebra. It has the curious property that all its nonabelian finitary reducts with group operation are nondualizable. We were able to prove dualizability by utilizing a new clone theoretic approach developed by Davey, Pitkethly, and Willard. Our results suggest that supernilpotence plays an important role in characterizing dualizability among Mal’cev algebras.

We provide an unconditional proof of the André–Oort conjecture for the coarse moduli space 𝒜2,1 of principally polarized abelian surfaces, following the strategy outlined by Pila–Zannier.

We prove the following theorems. Theorem 1: for any E-field with cyclic kernel, in particular ℂ or the Zilber fields, all real abelian algebraic numbers are pointwise definable. Theorem 2: for the Zilber fields, the only pointwise definable algebraic numbers are the real abelian numbers.

We devise a fairly general sufficient condition ensuring that the endomorphism monoid of a countably infinite ultrahomogeneous structure (i.e. a Fraïssé limit) embeds all countable semigroups. This approach not only provides us with a framework unifying the previous scattered results in this vein, but actually yields new applications for endomorphism monoids of the (rational) Urysohn space and the countable universal ultrahomogeneous semilattice.

According to the André–Oort conjecture, an algebraic curve in Y (1)n that is not equal to a special subvariety contains only finitely many points which correspond to ann-tuple of elliptic curves with complex multiplication. Pink’s conjecture generalizes the André–Oort conjecture to the extent that if the curve is not contained in a special subvariety of positive codimension, then it is expected to meet the union of all special subvarieties of codimension two in only finitely many points. We prove this for a large class of curves in Y (1)n. When restricting to special subvarieties of codimension two that are not strongly special we obtain finiteness for all curves defined over . Finally, we formulate and prove a variant of the Mordell–Lang conjecture for subvarieties of Y (1)n.

Given a set D of positive real numbers, let Xn(D) denote the graph with ℝn as the vertex set such that two points are joined if their distance is in D. Bukh conjectured in [Measurable sets with excluded distances. Geom. Funct. Anal.18 (2008), 668–697] that if D is algebraically independent, then Chr(Xn(D)), the chromatic number of Xn(D), is finite. Here we prove that Chr(Xn(D)) is countable and that, if n=2 , even the coloring number is countable. Furthermore, we prove that Chr (Y )is countable, where Y is the following graph on ℂn: let 𝔽 be a countable subfield of ℂ and let D⊆ℂ be algebraically independent over 𝔽; join a,b∈ℂn if there is some p(x,y)∈𝔽[x,y]such that p(x,x)is identically zero and p(a,b)≠0is algebraic over some d∈𝔽∪D.

We extract a quantitative variant of uniqueness from the usual hypotheses of the implicit function theorem. Not only does this lead to an a priori proof of continuity, but also to an alternative, full proof of the implicit function theorem. Additionally, we investigate implicit functions as a case of the unique existence paradigm with parameters.

We study the existence of some covers and envelopes in the chain complex category of R-modules. Let (𝒜,ℬ) be a cotorsion pair in R-Mod and let ℰ𝒜 stand for the class of all exact complexes with each term in 𝒜. We prove that (ℰ𝒜,ℰ𝒜⊥) is a perfect cotorsion pair whenever 𝒜 is closed under pure submodules, cokernels of pure monomorphisms and direct limits and so every complex has an ℰ𝒜-cover. As an application we show that every complex of R-modules over a right coherent ring R has an exact Gorenstein flat cover. In addition, the existence of -covers and -envelopes of special complexes is considered where and denote the classes of all complexes with each term in 𝒜 and ℬ, respectively.

We compare two influential ways of defining a generalized notion of space. The first, inspired by Gelfand duality, states that the category of ‘noncommutative spaces’ is the opposite of the category of C*-algebras. The second, loosely generalizing Stone duality, maintains that the category of ‘point-free spaces’ is the opposite of the category of frames (that is, complete lattices in which the meet distributes over arbitrary joins). Earlier work by the first three authors shows how a noncommutative C*-algebra gives rise to a commutative one internal to a certain sheaf topos. The latter, then, has a constructive Gelfand spectrum, also internal to the topos in question. After a brief review of this work, we compute the so-called external description of this internal spectrum, which in principle is a fibred point-free space in the familiar topos of sets and functions. However, we obtain the external spectrum as a fibred topological space in the usual sense. This leads to an explicit Gelfand transform, as well as to a topological reinterpretation of the Kochen–Specker theorem of quantum mechanics.

An interval in a combinatorial structure R is a set I of points that are related to every point in R∖I in the same way. A structure is simple if it has no proper intervals. Every combinatorial structure can be expressed as an inflation of a simple structure by structures of smaller sizes—this is called the substitution (or modular) decomposition. In this paper we prove several results of the following type: an arbitrary structure S of size n belonging to a class 𝒞 can be embedded into a simple structure from 𝒞 by adding at most f(n) elements. We prove such results when 𝒞 is the class of all tournaments, graphs, permutations, posets, digraphs, oriented graphs and general relational structures containing a relation of arity greater than two. The functions f(n) in these cases are 2, ⌈log 2(n+1)⌉, ⌈(n+1)/2⌉, ⌈(n+1)/2⌉, ⌈log 4(n+1)⌉, ⌈log 3(n+1)⌉ and 1, respectively. In each case these bounds are the best possible.

In Flaminio and Montagna [‘An algebraic approach to states on MV-algebras’, in: Fuzzy Logic 2, Proc. 5th EUSFLAT Conference, Ostrava, 11–14 September 2007 (ed. V. Novák) (Universitas Ostraviensis, Ostrava, 2007), Vol. II, pp. 201–206; ‘MV-algebras with internal states and probabilistic fuzzy logic’, Internat. J. Approx. Reason.50 (2009), 138–152], the authors introduced MV-algebras with an internal state, called state MV-algebras. (The letters MV stand for multi-valued.) In Di Nola and Dvurečenskij [‘State-morphism MV-algebras’, Ann. Pure Appl. Logic161 (2009), 161–173], a stronger version of state MV-algebras, called state-morphism MV-algebras, was defined. In this paper, we present the Loomis–Sikorski theorem for σ-complete MV-algebras with a σ-complete state-morphism-operator, showing that every such MV-algebra is aσ-homomorphic image of a tribe of functions with an internal state induced by a function where all the MV-operations are defined by points.