Related papers: Group Width

For a smooth, closed $n$-manifold $M$, we define an upper semi-continuous integer-valued complexity function on $H^1(M;{\mathbb R})$ using Morse theory. This measures how far an integral class is from being a fiber of a fibration. The fact…

The conjugacy growth function counts the number of distinct conjugacy classes in a ball of radius $n$. We give a lower bound for the conjugacy growth of certain branch groups, among them the Grigorchuk group. This bound is a function of…

We study the girth of Cayley graphs of finite classical groups G on random sets of generators. Our main tool is an essentially best possible bound we obtain on the probability that a given word w takes the value 1 when evaluated in G in…

We show that the Cheeger constant of compact surfaces is bounded by a function of the area. We apply this to isoperimetric profiles of bounded genus non-compact surfaces, to show that if their isoperimetric profile grows faster than $\sqrt…

The notions of quasiconvexity, Wright convexity and convexity for functions defined on a metric Abelian group are introduced. Various characterizations of such functions, the structural properties of the functions classes so obtained are…

We study several aspects of the $k$-th Cheeger constant of a complex X, a parameter that quantifies the distance of $X$ from a complex $Y$ with nontrivial $k$-th cohomology over $\mathbb{Z}_2$. Our results include general methods for…

Motivated by fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) problems in computational topology, we consider the treewidth of a compact, connected 3-manifold $M$ defined by \[ \operatorname{tw}(M) =…

In graph theory, as well as in 3-manifold topology, there exist several width-type parameters to describe how "simple" or "thin" a given graph or 3-manifold is. These parameters, such as pathwidth or treewidth for graphs, or the concept of…

Let $G$ be a group. A function $l:G\rightarrow \lbrack 0,\infty )$ is called a length function if (1) $l(g^{n})=|n|l(g)$ for any $g\in G$ and $n\in \mathbb{Z};$ (2) $l(hgh^{-1})=l(g)$ for any $h,g\in G;$ and (3) $l(ab)\leq l(a)+l(b)$ for…

Let $d \geq 2$. The Cheeger constant of a graph is the minimum surface-to-volume ratio of all subsets of the vertex set with relative volume at most 1/2. There are several ways to define surface and volume here: the simplest method is to…

We discuss a possible definition for "$k$-width" of both a closed $d$-manifold $M^d$, and on embedding $M^d \overset{e}{\hookrightarrow} \mathbb{R}^n$, $n > d \ge k$, generalizing the classical notion of width of a knot. We show that for…

In physics, two systems that radically differ at short scales can exhibit strikingly similar macroscopic behaviour: they are part of the same long-distance universality class. Here we apply this viewpoint to geometry and initiate a program…

Let X be a finite CW complex or compact Lipschitz neighborhood retract with universal cover Z; let M be a compact orientable manifold of dimension at least 2 and nonempty boundary. We establish the existence of an isoperimetric profile for…

In analogy with the Thurston norm, we define for an orientable 3-manifold $M$ a numerical function on $H_2(M;Q/Z)$. This function measures the minimal complexity of folded surfaces representing a given homology class. A similar function is…

A graph has tree-width at most $k$ if it can be obtained from a set of graphs each with at most $k+1$ vertices by a sequence of clique sums. We refine this definition by, for each non-negative integer $\theta$, defining the…

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.

In this note, we study the general form of a multiplicative bijection on several families of functions defined on manifolds, both real or complex valued. In the real case, we prove that it is essentially defined by a composition with a…

We prove an asymptotic analog of the classical Hurewicz theorem on mappings which lower dimension. This theorem allows us to find sharp upper bound estimates for the asymptotic dimension of groups acting on finite dimensional metric spaces…

If $(M^n, g)$ is a closed Riemannian manifold where every unit ball has volume at most $\epsilon_n$ (a sufficiently small constant), then the $(n-1)$-dimensional Uryson width of $(M^n, g)$ is at most 1.

In this paper we measure how efficiently a finite simple group $G$ is generated by its elements of order $p$, where $p$ is a fixed prime. This measure, known as the $p$-width of $G$, is the minimal $k\in \mathbb{N}$ such that any $g\in G$…