Related papers: A Strong Tits Alternative

We give a method for constructing dense and free subgroups in real Lie groups. In particular we show that any dense subgroup of a connected semisimple real Lie group G contains a free group on two generators which is still dense in G, and…

In this note, we prove: \medskip \noindent {\bf Theorem A:} \emph{ There is a fixed constant $C$ such that for any positive integer $n$ and prime $p$, every finite subgroup $G$ of order coprime to $p$ of ${\rm GL}(n,\mathbb{C})$ has an…

We prove that if L is a finite simple group of Lie type and A a symmetric set of generators of L, then A grows i.e |AAA| > |A|^{1+epsilon} where epsilon depends only on the Lie rank of L, or AAA=L. This implies that for a family of simple…

We prove that in every finitely generated profinite group, every subgroup of finite index is open; this implies that the topology on such groups is determined by the algebraic structure. This is deduced from the main result about finite…

We prove that any non-cocompact irreducible lattice in a higher rank semi-simple Lie group contains a subgroup of finite index, which has three generators.

A recent article of J.P. Bell, K. Huang, W. Peng and T.J. Tucker establishes an analog of the Tits alternative for semigroups of endomorphisms of the projective line. The proof involves a ping-pong argument on arithmetic height functions.…

Let $S$ be an algebraic semigroup (not necessarily linear) defined over a field $F$. We show that there exists a positive integer $n$ such that $x^n$ belongs to a subgroup of $S(F)$ for any $x \in S(F)$. In particular, the semigroup $S(F)$…

We will give an example of a branch group $G$ that has exponential growth but does not contain any non-abelian free subgroups. This answers question 16 from \cite{Bartholdi} positively. The proof demonstrates how to construct a non-trivial…

Let v and w be nontrivial words in two free groups. We prove that, for all sufficiently large finite non-abelian simple groups G, there exist subsets C of v(G) and D of w(G) of size such that every element of G can be realized in at least…

The goal of this article is to study results and examples concerning finitely presented covers of finitely generated amenable groups. We collect examples of groups $G$ with the following properties: (i) $G$ is finitely generated, (ii) $G$…

Given a group $G$ with bounded torsion that acts properly on a systolic complex, we show that every solvable subgroup of $G$ is finitely generated and virtually abelian of rank at most $2$. In particular this gives a new proof of the above…

If $V$ is an irreducible algebraic variety over a number field $K$, and $L$ is a field containing $K$, we say that $V$ is diophantine-stable for $L/K$ if $V(L) = V(K)$. We prove that if $V$ is either a simple abelian variety, or a curve of…

The semidirect product $\mathbb{G}=\mathbb{L}\rtimes \mathbb{K}$ attached to a compact-group action on a connected, simply-connected solvable Lie group has a dense set of compact elements precisely when the $s\in \mathbb{K}$ operating on…

A famous result of Freiman describes the structure of finite sets A of integers with small doubling property. If |A + A| <= K|A| then A is contained within a multidimensional arithmetic progression of dimension d(K) and size f(K)|A|. Here…

We show that free Burnside groups of sufficiently large odd exponent are non--amenable in a certain strong sense, more precisely, their left regular representations are isolated from the trivial representation uniformly on finite generating…

We show that there is an absolute $c>0$ such that any subset of $\mathbb{F}_2^\infty$ of size $N$ is $O(N^{1-c})$-stable in the sense of Terry and Wolf. By contrast a size $N$ arithmetic progression in the integers is not $N$-stable.

We prove the Tits Alternative for groups acting on $2$-dimensional "recurrent" complexes with uniformly bounded cell stabilisers. This class of complexes includes, among others: $2$-dimensional Euclidean buildings, $2$-dimensional systolic…

Fix $k \geq 6$. We prove that any large enough finite group $G$ contains $k$ elements which span quadratically many triples of the form $(a,b,ab) \in S \times G$, given any dense set $S \subseteq G \times G$. The quadratic bound is…

We prove an extension property for $M_d$-multipliers from a subgroup to the ambient group, showing that $M_{d+1}(G)$ is strictly contained in $M_d(G)$ whenever $G$ contains a free subgroup. Another consequence of this result is the…

We study the existence of various types of gradings on Lie algebras, such as Carnot gradings or gradings in positive integers, and prove that the existence of such gradings is invariant under extensions of scalars. As an application, we…