Related papers: Remarks on profinite groups having few open subgro…

We introduce the condition of a profinite group being semi-free, which is more general than being free and more restrictive than being quasi-free. In particular, every projective semi-free profinite group is free. We prove that the usual…

We discuss whether finiteness properties of a profinite group $G$ can be deduced from the probabilistic zeta function $P_G(s)$. In particular we prove that if $P_G(s)$ is rational and all but finitely many nonabelian composition factors of…

We give two examples of a finitely generated subgroup of a free group and a subset, closed in the profinite topology of a free group, such that their product is not closed in the profinite topology of a free group.

A residually finite (profinite) group $G$ is just infinite if every non-trivial (closed) normal subgroup of $G$ is of finite index. This paper considers the problem of determining whether a (closed) subgroup $H$ of a just infinite group is…

We obtain some general restrictions on the continuous endomorphisms of a profinite group G under the assumption that G has only finitely many open subgroups of each index (an assumption which automatically holds, for instance, if G is…

The article deals with profinite groups in which the centralizers are pronilpotent (CN-groups). It is shown that such groups are virtually pronilpotent. More precisely, let G be a profinite CN-group, and let F be the maximal normal…

We prove that there exist finitely presented, residually finite groups that are profinitely rigid in the class of all finitely presented groups but not in the class of all finitely generated groups. These groups are of the form $\Gamma…

Surface groups are determined among limit groups by their profinite completions. As a corollary, the set of surface words in a free group is closed in the profinite topology.

In this note we show that various (geometric/homological) finiteness properties are not profinite properties. For example for every $1 \le k, \ell \le \bbn$, there exist two finitely generated residually finite groups $\Ga_1$ and $\Ga_2$…

We give criteria on an inverse system of finite groups that ensure the limit is just infinite or hereditarily just infinite. More significantly, these criteria are 'universal' in that all (hereditarily) just infinite profinite groups arise…

We say that a finite group $G$ satisfies the independence property if, for every pair of distinct elements $x$ and $y$ of $G$, either $\{x,y\}$ is contained in a minimal generating set for $G$ or one of $x$ and $y$ is a power of the other.…

A group $G$ is said to have restricted centralizers if for each $g \in G$ the centralizer $C_G(g)$ either is finite or has finite index in $G$. Shalev showed that a profinite group with restricted centralizers is virtually abelian. We take…

We prove that certain Fuchsian triangle groups are profinitely rigid in the absolute sense, i.e. each is distinguished from all other finitely generated, residually finite groups by its set of finite quotients. We also develop a method…

We consider the group $\mathfrak{X}(G)$ obtained from $G\ast G$ by forcing each element $g$ in the first free factor to commute with the copy of $g$ in the second free factor. Deceptively complicated finitely presented groups arise from…

We show that property (T) is not profinite, that is, we construct two finitely generated residually finite groups which have isomorphic profinite completions while one admits property (T) and the other does not. This settles a question…

Let $w$ be a multilinear commutator word. In the present paper we describe recent results that show that if $G$ is a profinite group in which all $w$-values are contained in a union of finitely (or in some cases countably) many subgroups…

We call a group $G$ {\it algorithmically finite} if no algorithm can produce an infinite set of pairwise distinct elements of $G$. We construct examples of recursively presented infinite algorithmically finite groups and study their…

We show that the class of profinite duality groups is closed under group extensions provided that the kernel satisfies some finiteness condition. This extends earlier results of Pletch and of Wingberg.

We consider profinite groups as 2-sorted first order structures, with a group sort, and a second sort which acts as an index set for a uniformly definable basis of neighbourhoods of the identity. It is shown that if the basis consists of…

For a positive integer r we prove that if G is a profinite group in which the centralizer of every nontrivial element has rank at most r, then G is either a pro-p group or a group of finite rank. Further, if G is not virtually a pro-p…