Related papers: Growth of Primitive Elements in Free Groups

A word in a free group is called ``potentially positive'' if it is automorphic to an element which is written with only positive exponents. We will develop automata to analyze properties of potentially positive words. We will use these to…

We establish new characterizations of primitive elements and free factors in free groups, which are based on the distributions they induce on finite groups. For every finite group $G$, a word $w$ in the free group on $k$ generators induces…

Let F_k be the free group on k generators. A word w \in F_k is called primitive if it belongs to some basis of F_k. We investigate two criteria for primitivity, and consider more generally, subgroups of F_k which are free factors. The first…

Let $F_k$ be the free group on $k$ generators, and let $H\le J\le \F_k$ be subgroups of finite rank. We present a new elementary algorithm to determine whether $H$ is a free factor of $J$. In particular, this algorithm can determine whether…

We observe that a sharp result on the exponential growth rate of the number of primitive elements exists for the free group on two generators.

Let $F= < a,b>$ be a rank two free group. A word $W(a,b)$ in $F$ is {\sl primitive} if it, along with another group element, generates the group. It is a {\sl palindrome} (with respect to $a$ and $b$) if it reads the same forwards and…

For the free group $F_r$ on $r>1$ generators (respectively, the free product $G_1 * G_2$ of two nontrivial finite groups $G_1$ and $G_2$), we obtain the asymptotic for the number of conjugacy classes of commutators in $F_r$ (respectively,…

The centrepiece of this paper is a normal form for primitive elements which facilitates the use of induction arguments to prove properties of primitive elements. The normal form arises from an elementary algorithm for constructing a…

Let $\mathcal{A}$ be an alphabet of size $n\ge 2$. In this paper, we give a complete description of primitive words $p\neq q$ over an alphabet $\mathcal{A}$ of size $n\geq2$ such that $pq$ is non-primitive and $|p|=2|q|$. In particular, if…

The present paper records more details of the relationship between primitive elements and palindromes in F_2, the free group of rank two. We characterise the conjugacy classes of primitive elements which contain palindromes as those which…

In this paper we study the generic, i.e., typical, behavior of finitely generated subgroups of hyperbolic groups and also the generic behavior of the word problem for amenable groups. We show that a random set of elements of a nonelementary…

An element $\alpha \in \mathbb F_{q^n}$ is \emph{normal} if $\mathcal{B} = \{\alpha, \alpha^q, \ldots, \alpha^{q^{n-1}}\}$ forms a basis of $\mathbb F_{q^n}$ as a vector space over $\mathbb F_{q}$; in this case, $\mathcal{B}$ is a normal…

An element of a finitely generated non-Abelian free group F(X) is said to be filling if that element has positive translation length in every very small action of F(X) on an $\mathbb{R}$-tree. We give a proof that the set of filling…

We study a deliberately simple, fully non-linguistic model of text: a sequence of independent draws from a finite alphabet of letters plus a single space symbol. A word is defined as a maximal block of non-space symbols. Within this…

Asymptotic properties of finitely generated subgroups of free groups, and of finite group presentations, can be considered in several fashions, depending on the way these objects are represented and on the distribution assumed on these…

Let $\mathrm{WP}_G$ denote the word problem in a finitely generated group $G$. We consider the complexity of $\mathrm{WP}_G$ with respect to standard deterministic Turing machines. Let $\mathrm{DTIME}_k(t(n))$ be the complexity class of…

We study the average case complexity of the uniform membership problem for subgroups of free groups, and we show that it is orders of magnitude smaller than the worst case complexity of the best known algorithms. This applies to subgroups…

Let $\Gamma_p$ denote the Hecke group where $p=2r$, $r>0$. Let $\mathcal{N}_l$ denote the set of conjugacy classes of reciprocal elements of word length $l$ in $\Gamma_p$. We prove that for $l \to \infty$, $$|\mathcal{N}_l| =…

Let $\mathbb{F}_{q^n}$ be a finite field with $q^n$ elements. For a positive divisor $r$ of $q^n-1$, the element $\alpha \in \mathbb{F}_{q^n}^*$ is called \textit{$r$-primitive} if its multiplicative order is $(q^n-1)/r$. Also, for a…

Let $\mathbb{F}_{q^n}$ be a finite field with $q^n$ elements. An element $\alpha \in \mathbb{F}_{q^n}$ is called $k$-normal over $\mathbb{F}_q$ if $\alpha$ and its conjugates generate a vector subspace of $\mathbb{F}_{q^n}$ of dimension…