Related papers: Powers of sets in free groups

We show that if $A\subset \{1,\ldots,N\}$ has no solutions to $a-b=n^2$ with $a,b\in A$ and $n\geq 1$ then \[|A|\ll \frac{N}{(\log N)^{c\log\log \log N}}\] for some absolute constant $c>0$. This improves upon a result of…

We study the commensurators of free groups and free pro-$p$ groups, as well as certain subgroups of these. We prove that the commensurator $Comm(F)$ of a non-abelian free group of finite rank $F$ is not virtually simple, answering a…

The Frankl conjecture, also known as the union-closed sets conjecture, states that in any finite non-empty union-closed family, there exists an element in at least half of the sets. From an optimization point of view, one could instead…

Denote by $G$ a finite group and let $\psi(G)$ denote the sum of element orders in $G$. In 2009, H.Amiri, S.M.Jafarian Amiri and I.M.Isaacs proved that if $|G|=n$ and $G$ is non-cyclic, then $\psi(G)<\psi(C_n)$, where $C_n$ denotes the…

A subset X of a group G is a set of pairwise non-commuting ele- ments if ab 6= ba for any two distinct elements a and b in X. If jXj ? jY j for any other set of pairwise non-commuting elements Y in G, then X is said to be a maximal subset…

A set $A\subset \mathbb{F}_p^n$ is sum-free if $A+A$ does not intersect $A$. If $p\equiv 2 \mod 3$, the maximal size of a sum-free in $\mathbb{F}_p^n$ is known to be $(p^n+p^{n-1})/3$. We show that if a sum-free set $A\subset…

We show that, in contrast to the integers setting, almost all even order abelian groups $G$ have exponentially fewer maximal sum-free sets than $2^{\mu(G)/2}$, where $\mu(G)$ denotes the size of a largest sum-free set in $G$. This confirms…

In Chapter 1 we give the basic background and notations. We also give a new characterization of the Conrad property for orderings. In Chapter 2, we use the new characterization of the Conradian property to give a classification of groups…

We give a comprehensive description of the sets $A$ in finite cyclic groups such that $|2A|<\frac94|A|$; namely, we show that any set with this property is densely contained in a (one-dimensional) coset progression. This improves earlier…

We prove various finite de Finetti theorems for non-commutative distributions which are invariant under the free easy quantum group actions. This complements the free de Finetti theorems by Banica, Curran and Speicher, which mostly focus on…

We use the notion of fixity for representations of finite groups to construct free and smooth actions on products of spheres. In particular we show that a finite p-group (for p>3) will act freely and smoothly on a product of two spheres if…

For any choice of a basis $\cal A$ the free group $F_N$ of finite rank $N \geq 2$ can be canonically identified with the set $F(\cal A)$ of reduced words in $\cal A\cup \cal A^{-1}$. However, such a word $w \in F(\cal A)$ admits a second…

Let G be the free product of groups A and B with commuting subgroups H \leqslant A and K \leqslant B, and let C be the class of all finite groups or the class of all finite p-groups. We derive the description of all C-separable cyclic…

Let n be an integer, and consider finite sequences of elements of the group Z/nZ x Z/nZ. Such a sequence is called zero-sum free, if no subsequence has sum zero. It is known that the maximal length of such a zero-sum free sequence is 2n-2,…

An analogue of Burnside's Lemma for 2-transitive groups is shown to hold for a class of topological groups. If the group is compact the representation is finite and splits into an irreducible and the constant functions. If both the group…

A countable group is C*-simple if its reduced C*-algebra is a simple algebra. Since Powers recognised in 1975 that non-abelian free groups are C*-simple, large classes of groups which appear naturally in geometry have been identified,…

We provide an elementary proof that subgroups of free groups are free via group actions.

Babai and S\'os have asked whether there exists a constant c>0 such that every finite group G has a product-free subset of size at least c|G|: that is, a subset X that does not contain three elements x, y and z with xy=z. In this paper we…

We prove that the semigroup generated by a reversible Mealy automaton contains a free subsemigroup of rank two if and only if it contains an element of infinite order.

We construct automata over a binary alphabet with $2n$ states, $n\geq 2$, whose states freely generate a free group of rank $2n$. Combined with previous work, this shows that a free group of every finite rank can be generated by finite…