Related papers: Sieve methods in group theory II: The Mapping Clas…

We quantify the generation of free subgroups of surface mapping class groups by pseudo-Anosov mapping classes in terms of their translation distance and the distance between their axes. Our methods make reference to \teichmuller space only.

We establish a criterion for certain mapping classes of a surface homeomorphisms to be pseudo-Anosov in terms of the geometry of hyperbolic 3-manifolds and Gromov-hyperbolic surface group extensions. Specifically, any element of the…

For a convergence group equipped with an expanding coarse-cocycle, we construct finitely generated free subsemigroups, which we call $\textit{Bishop--Jones}$ $\textit{semigroups}$, of critical exponent arbitrarily close to but strictly less…

We introduce a general method for showing under weak forcing axioms that reduced products of countable models of a theory $T$ have as few automorphisms as possible. We show that such forcing axioms imply that reduced products of countably…

Let $G$ be a finite simple group of Lie type and let $P$ be a Sylow $2$-subgroup of $G$. In this paper, we prove that for any nontrivial element $x \in G$, there exists $g \in G$ such that $G = \langle P, x^g \rangle$. By combining this…

We show that a topologically generating set $S$ of a connected compact Lie group $G$ of size larger than a fixed polynomial in the rank of $G$ must be redundant (i.e., some proper subset of $S$ still topologically generates $G$). Similar…

We prove that the class of numerable open covers of topological spaces is the smallest class that contains covers with pairwise disjoint elements and numerable covers with two elements, closed under composition and coarsening of covers. We…

This paper, together with a forthcoming paper by the author and Seitz, proves the Margulis-Platonov conjecture concerning the normal subgroup structure of algebraic groups over number fields, in the case of inner forms of anisotropic groups…

Machine learning is applied to find proofs, with smaller or smallest numbers of nodes, for the classification of 4-nilpotent semigroups.

In this paper, we prove that each automorphism of the Torelli group of a surface is induced by a diffeomorphism of the surface, provided that the surface is a closed, connected, orientable surface of genus at least 3. This result was…

We show that mapping class groups of surfaces of genus at least two contain elements of infinite order that are not conjugate to their inverses, but whose powers have bounded torsion lengths. In particular every homogeneous…

Based on an idea in [Gan--Savin, Represent. Theory (2005)], we give a classification of minimal representations of connected simple real Lie groups not of type $A$. Actually, we prove that there exist no new minimal representations up to…

Consider an equidimensional faithful conical action of an algebraic torus $T$ on an affine normal conical variety $X$ over an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero. Then there exists a finite normal subgroup $N$ of $T$ such that…

We study the property $P_{\text {naive }}$ of mapping class groups of surfaces of infinite type, that is, for any finite collection of non-trivial elements $h_{1},h_{2}, \cdots, h_{n}$, there exists another element $g\neq 1$ of infinite…

We show that every Hausdorff topological group is a group retract of a minimal topological group. This first was conjectured by Pestov in 1983. Our main result leads to a solution of some problems of Arhangelskii. One of them is the problem…

Suppose that $A$ is a finite, nonempty subset of a cyclic group of either infinite or prime order. We show that if the difference set $A-A$ is ``not too large'', then there is a nonzero group element with at least as many as…

In this article we will describe a finitely presented subgroup of Monod's group of piecewise projective homeomorphisms of R. This in particular provides a new example of a finitely presented group which is nonamenable and yet does not…

In this article we survey, and make a few new observations about, the surprising connection between sub-monoids of mapping class groups and interesting geometry and topology in low-dimensions.

We study 2-representations, i.e., actions of 2-groups on 2-vector spaces. Our main focus is character theory for 2-representations. To this end we employ the technique of extended Burnside rings. Our main theorem is that the Ganter-Kapranov…

We classify in terms of Hopf-type properties mapping tori of residually finite Poincar\'e Duality groups with non-zero Euler characteristic. This generalises and gives a new proof of the analogous classification for fibered 3-manifolds.…