Related papers: Word length in surface groups with characteristic …

Let $\Sigma$ be a surface of negative Euler characteristic and $S$ a generating set for $\pi_1(\Sigma,p)$ consisting of simple loops that are pairwise disjoint (except at $p$). We show that the word length with respect to $S$ of an element…

Each free homotopy class of directed closed curves on a surface with boundary can be described by a cyclic reduced word in the generators of the fundamental group and their inverses. The word length is the number of letters of the cyclic…

Consider a one-ended word-hyperbolic group. If it is the fundamental group of a graph of free groups with cyclic edge groups then either it is the fundamental group of a surface or it contains a finitely generated one-ended subgroup of…

The study of word hyperbolic groups is a prominent topic in geometric group theory; however word hyperbolic groups are defined by a geometric condition which does not extend naturally to semigroups. We propose a linguistic definition.…

For a subshift over a finite alphabet, a measure of the complexity of the system is obtained by counting the number of nonempty cylinder sets of length $n$. When this complexity grows exponentially, the automorphism group has been shown to…

Given any generating set of any pseudo-Anosov-containing subgroup of the mapping class group of a surface, we construct a pseudo-Anosov with word length bounded by a constant depending only on the surface. More generally, in any subgroup G…

In this paper we study the generic, i.e., typical, behavior of finitely generated subgroups of hyperbolic groups and also the generic behavior of the word problem for amenable groups. We show that a random set of elements of a nonelementary…

We study a characteristic subgroup of finitely generated groups, consisting of elements with uniform upper bound for word-lengths. For a group $G$, we denote this subgroup by $G_{bound}$. We give sufficient criteria for triviality and…

We study word maps with constants on symmetric groups. Even though there are mixed identities of bounded length that are valid for all symmetric groups, we show that no such identities hold in a metric sense. Moreover, we prove that word…

We construct words with small image in a given finite alternating or unimodular group. This shows that word width in these groups is unbounded in general.

We show that if $G$ is a non-elementary word hyperbolic group, mapping class group of a hyperbolic surface or the outer automorphism group of a nonabelian free group then $G$ has $2^{\aleph_0}$ many continuous ergodic invariant random…

Given a finite group with a generating subset there is a well-established notion of length for a group element given in terms of its minimal length expression as a product of elements from the generating set. Recently, certain quantities…

A word in a free group is called ``potentially positive'' if it is automorphic to an element which is written with only positive exponents. We will develop automata to analyze properties of potentially positive words. We will use these to…

Let $G$ be a non-elementary hyperbolic group. Let $w$ be a group word such that the set $w[G]$ of all its values in $G$ does not coincide with $G$ or 1. We show that the width of verbal subgroup $w(G)=<w[G]>$ is infinite. That is, there is…

Let S be a closed surface of genus at least 2. We show that a finitely generated group G which is an extension of the fundamental group H of S is word hyperbolic if and only the orbit map of the quotient group G/H on the complex of curves…

For a variety of finite groups $\mathbf H$, let $\overline{\mathbf H}$ denote the variety of finite semigroups all of whose subgroups lie in $\mathbf H$. We give a characterization of the subsets of a finite semigroup that are pointlike…

If an outer (multilinear) commutator identity holds in a large subgroup of a group, then it holds also in a large characteristic subgroup. Similar assertions are valid for algebras and their ideals or subspaces. Varying the meaning of the…

Given an infinite linear group with a finite set of generators, we show that the shortest word length of an element of infinite order has an upper bound that depends only on the number of generators and the degree. This provides a…

We find sharp upper bounds on the order of the automorphism group of a hypersurface in complex projective space in every dimension and degree. In each case, we prove that the hypersurface realizing the upper bound is unique up to…

In this paper we are concerned with the conjecture that, for any set of generators S of the symmetric group of degree n, the word length in terms of S of every permutation is bounded above by a polynomial of n. We prove this conjecture for…