We extend the notion of the J-invariant to arbitrary semisimple linear algebraic groups and provide complete decompositions for the normed Chow motives of all generically quasi-split twisted flag varieties. Besides, we establish some combinatorial patterns for normed Chow groups and motives and provide some explicit formulae for values of the J-invariant.

We compute the co-multiplication of the algebraic Morava K-theory for split orthogonal groups. This allows us to compute the decomposition of the Morava motives of generic maximal orthogonal Grassmannians and to compute a Morava K-theory analogue of the J-invariant in terms of the ordinary (Chow) J-invariant.

We study simple Lie algebras generated by extremal elements, over arbitrary fields of arbitrary characteristic. We show the following: (1) If the extremal geometry contains lines, then the Lie algebra admits a $5 \times 5$-grading that can be parametrized by a cubic norm structure; (2) If there exists a field extension of degree at most $2$ such that the extremal geometry over that field extension contains lines, and in addition, there exist symplectic pairs of extremal elements, then the Lie algebra admits a $5 \times 5$-grading that can be parametrized by a quadrangular algebra.

One of our key tools is a new definition of exponential maps that makes sense even over fields of characteristic $2$ and $3$, which ought to be interesting in its own right.

Not only was Jacques Tits a constant source of inspiration through his work, he also had a direct personal influence, notably through his threat to speak evil of our work if it did not include the characteristic 2 case.

—The Book of Involutions [KMRT98, p. xv]

We investigate properties of closed approximate subgroups of locally compact groups, with a particular interest for approximate lattices (i.e., those approximate subgroups that are discrete and have finite co-volume).

We prove an approximate subgroup version of Cartan’s closed-subgroup theorem and study some applications. We give a structure theorem for closed approximate subgroups of amenable groups in the spirit of the Breuillard–Green–Tao theorem. We then prove two results concerning approximate lattices: we extend to amenable groups a structure theorem for mathematical quasi-crystals due to Meyer; we prove results concerning intersections of radicals of Lie groups and discrete approximate subgroups generalising theorems due to Auslander, Bieberbach and Mostow. As an underlying theme, we exploit the notion of good models of approximate subgroups that stems from the work of Hrushovski, and Breuillard, Green and Tao. We show how one can draw information about a given approximate subgroup from a good model, when it exists.

We describe the $J$-invariant of a semisimple algebraic group $G$ over a generic splitting field of a Tits algebra of $G$ in terms of the $J$-invariant over the base field. As a consequence we prove a 10-year-old conjecture of Quéguiner-Mathieu, Semenov, and Zainoulline on the $J$-invariant of groups of type $\mathrm {D}_n$. In the case of type $\mathrm {D}_n$ we also provide explicit formulas for the first component and in some cases for the second component of the $J$-invariant.

Let ${\mathcal G}$ be a linear algebraic group over k, where k is an algebraically closed field, a pseudo-finite field or the valuation ring of a non-archimedean local field. Let $G= {\mathcal G}(k)$. We prove that if $\gamma\in G$ such that γ is a commutator and $\delta\in G$ such that $\langle \delta\rangle= \langle \gamma\rangle$ then δ is a commutator. This generalises a result of Honda for finite groups. Our proof uses the Lefschetz principle from first-order model theory.

We introduce and study the model-theoretic notions of absolute connectedness and type-absolute connectedness for groups. We prove that groups of rational points of split semisimple linear groups (that is, Chevalley groups) over arbitrary infinite fields are absolutely connected and characterize connected Lie groups which are type-absolutely connected. We prove that the class of type-absolutely connected group is exactly the class of discretely topologized groups with the trivial Bohr compactification, that is, the class of minimally almost periodic groups.

We generalize the works of Pappas–Rapoport–Zhu on twisted affine Grassmannians to the wildly ramified case under mild assumptions. This rests on a construction of certain smooth affine $\mathbb {Z}[t]$-groups with connected fibers of parahoric type, motivated by previous work of Tits. The resulting $\mathbb {F}_p(t)$-groups are pseudo-reductive and sometimes non-standard in the sense of Conrad–Gabber–Prasad, and their $\mathbb {F}_p [\hspace {-0,5mm}[ {t} ]\hspace {-0,5mm}] $-models are parahoric in a generalized sense. We study their affine Grassmannians, proving normality of Schubert varieties and Zhu’s coherence theorem.

Let G be a simple algebraic group of adjoint type over an algebraically closed field k of bad characteristic. We show that its sheets of conjugacy classes are parametrized by G-conjugacy classes of pairs $(M,{\mathcal O})$ where M is the identity component of the centralizer of a semisimple element in G and ${\mathcal O}$ is a rigid unipotent conjugacy class in M, in analogy with the good characteristic case.

For a subring $R$ of the rational numbers, we study $R$-localization functors in the local homotopy theory of simplicial presheaves on a small site and then in ${\mathbb {A}}^1$-homotopy theory. To this end, we introduce and analyze two notions of nilpotence for spaces in ${\mathbb {A}}^1$-homotopy theory, paying attention to future applications for vector bundles. We show that $R$-localization behaves in a controlled fashion for the nilpotent spaces we consider. We show that the classifying space $BGL_n$ is ${\mathbb {A}}^1$-nilpotent when $n$ is odd, and analyze the (more complicated) situation where $n$ is even as well. We establish analogs of various classical results about rationalization in the context of ${\mathbb {A}}^1$-homotopy theory: if $-1$ is a sum of squares in the base field, ${\mathbb {A}}^n \,{\setminus}\, 0$ is rationally equivalent to a suitable motivic Eilenberg–Mac Lane space, and the special linear group decomposes as a product of motivic spheres.

We study reductive subgroups H of a reductive linear algebraic group G – possibly nonconnected – such that H contains a regular unipotent element of G. We show that under suitable hypotheses, such subgroups are G-irreducible in the sense of Serre. This generalises results of Malle, Testerman and Zalesski. We obtain analogous results for Lie algebras and for finite groups of Lie type. Our proofs are short, conceptual and uniform.

We introduce and study model-theoretic connected components of rings as an analogue of model-theoretic connected components of definable groups. We develop their basic theory and use them to describe both the definable and classical Bohr compactifications of rings. We then use model-theoretic connected components to explicitly calculate Bohr compactifications of some classical matrix groups, such as the discrete Heisenberg group ${\mathrm {UT}}_3({\mathbb {Z}})$, the continuous Heisenberg group ${\mathrm {UT}}_3({\mathbb {R}})$, and, more generally, groups of upper unitriangular and invertible upper triangular matrices over unital rings.

We obtain a nontrivial upper bound for the multiplicative energy of any sufficiently large subset of a subvariety of a finite algebraic group. We also find some applications of our results to the growth of conjugates classes, estimates of exponential sums, and restriction phenomenon.

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 $G$ be a split semisimple algebraic group over a field and let $A^*$ be an oriented cohomology theory in the Levine–Morel sense. We provide a uniform approach to the $A^*$-motives of geometrically cellular smooth projective $G$-varieties based on the Hopf algebra structure of $A^*(G)$. Using this approach, we provide various applications to the structure of motives of twisted flag varieties.

We establish the sharp upper bounds on the indexes for most of the twisted flag varieties under the spin groups ${\operatorname {\mathrm {Spin}}(n)}$.

In 1978, Yu. F. Borisov presented an axiom system using a few basic assumptions and four explicit axioms, the fourth being a formulation of the relativity principle, and he demonstrated that this axiom system had (up to choice of units) only two models: a relativistic one in which worldview transformations are Poincaré transformations and a classical one in which they are Galilean. In this paper, we reformulate Borisov’s original four axioms within an intuitively simple, but strictly formal, first-order logic framework, and convert his basic background assumptions into explicit axioms. Instead of assuming that the structure of physical quantities is the field of real numbers, we assume only that they form an ordered field. This allows us to investigate how Borisov’s theorem depends on the structure of quantities.

We demonstrate (as our main contribution) how to construct Euclidean, Galilean, and Poincaré models of Borisov’s axiom system over every non-Archimedean field. We also demonstrate the existence of an infinite descending chain of models and transformation groups in each of these three cases, something that is not possible over Archimedean fields.

As an application, we note that there is a model of Borisov’s axioms that satisfies the relativity principle, and in which the worldview transformations are Euclidean isometries. Over the field of reals it is easy to eliminate this model using natural axioms concerning time’s arrow and the absence of instantaneous motion. In the case of non-Archimedean fields, however, the Euclidean isometries appear intrinsically as worldview transformations in models of Borisov’s axioms, and neither the assumption of time’s arrow, nor the rejection of instantaneous motion, can eliminate them.

Let G be a reductive algebraic group—possibly non-connected—over a field k, and let H be a subgroup of G. If $G= {GL }_n$, then there is a degeneration process for obtaining from H a completely reducible subgroup $H'$ of G; one takes a limit of H along a cocharacter of G in an appropriate sense. We generalise this idea to arbitrary reductive G using the notion of G-complete reducibility and results from geometric invariant theory over non-algebraically closed fields due to the authors and Herpel. Our construction produces a G-completely reducible subgroup $H'$ of G, unique up to $G(k)$-conjugacy, which we call a k-semisimplification of H. This gives a single unifying construction that extends various special cases in the literature (in particular, it agrees with the usual notion for $G= GL _n$ and with Serre’s ‘G-analogue’ of semisimplification for subgroups of $G(k)$ from [19]). We also show that under some extra hypotheses, one can pick $H'$ in a more canonical way using the Tits Centre Conjecture for spherical buildings and/or the theory of optimal destabilising cocharacters introduced by Hesselink, Kempf, and Rousseau.

We study a relative variant of Serre’s notion of $G$-complete reducibility for a reductive algebraic group $G$. We let $K$ be a reductive subgroup of $G$, and consider subgroups of $G$ that normalize the identity component $K^{\circ }$. We show that such a subgroup is relatively $G$-completely reducible with respect to $K$ if and only if its image in the automorphism group of $K^{\circ }$ is completely reducible. This allows us to generalize a number of fundamental results from the absolute to the relative setting. We also derive analogous results for Lie subalgebras of the Lie algebra of $G$, as well as ‘rational’ versions over nonalgebraically closed fields.

We solve the inverse differential Galois problem over differential fields with a large field of constants of infinite transcendence degree over $\mathbb{Q}$. More generally, we show that over such a field, every split differential embedding problem can be solved. In particular, we solve the inverse differential Galois problem and all split differential embedding problems over $\mathbb{Q}_{p}(x)$.