Related papers: Introduction to Sofic and Hyperlinear groups and C…

Relatively recently, two new classes of (discrete, countable) groups have been isolated: hyperlinear groups and sofic groups. They come from different corners of mathematics (operator algebras and symbolic dynamics, respectively), and were…

We provide a quantitative formulation of the equivalence between hyperlinearity and soficity for amenable groups, effectively showing how every hyperlinear approximation to such a group is simulated by a suitable sofic approximation. The…

We prove that Connes' Embedding Conjecture holds for the von Neumann algebras of sofic groups, that is sofic groups are hyperlinear. Hence we provide some new examples of hyperlinearity. We also show that the Determinant Conjecture holds…

We consider (projectively) linearly sofic groups, i.e. groups which can be approximated using (projective) matrices over arbitrary fields, as a generalization of sofic groups. We generalize known results for sofic groups and groups which…

We define basic notions in the category of conic representations of a topological group and prove elementary facts about them. We show that a conic representation determines an ordinary dynamical system of the group together with a…

The concept of a C-approximable group, for a class of finite groups C, is a common generalization of the concepts of a sofic, weakly sofic, and linear sofic group. Glebsky raised the question whether all groups are approximable by finite…

Let $\mathcal{C}\subseteq \mathbb{N}^p$ be an integer cone. A $\mathcal{C}$-semigroup $S\subseteq \mathcal{C}$ is an affine semigroup such that the set $\mathcal{C}\setminus S$ is finite. Such $\mathcal{C}$-semigroups are central to our…

Sofic groups generalise both residually finite and amenable groups, and the concept is central to many important results and conjectures in measured group theory. We introduce a topological notion of a sofic boundary attached to a given…

We provide a quantitative formulation of the equivalence between hyperlinearity and soficity for amenable groups, showing that every hyperlinear approximation to such a group is essentially produced from a sofic approximation. This…

This thesis aims to serve as an introduction to the theory of quasitilings for amenable groups. In order to showcase the power of this theory, we focus on the study of the Sofic L\"uck Approximation Conjecture, which can be proven for…

Several well-known open questions (such as: are all groups sofic/hyperlinear?) have a common form: can all groups be approximated by asymptotic homomorphisms into the symmetric groups $\mathrm{Sym}(n)$ (in the sofic case) or the finite…

We investigate the semigroup of integer points inside a convex cone. We extend classical results in integer linear programming to integer conic programming. We show that the semigroup associated with nonpolyhedral cones can sometimes have a…

We give new characterizations of sofic groups: -- A group $G$ is sofic if and only if it is a subgroup of a quotient of a direct product of alternating or symmetric groups. -- A group $G$ is sofic if and only if any system of equations…

This document is an expanded version of a lecture presented at a conference on "Thin Groups and Superstrong Approximation" held at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in February 2012. Superstrong approximation is a criterion on a…

A countable group G is called k-linear sofic (for some 0 <k \le 1) if finite subsets of G admit "approximate representations" by complex invertible matrices in the normalized rank metric, so that non-identity elements are k-away from the…

We consider metric ultraproducts of finite groups with respect to some classes of length functions. All sofic groups embed into these ultraproducts. We study embeddings of normed groups. We also show that in some natural situations such an…

This survey paper concerns mainly with some asymptotic topological properties of finitely presented discrete groups: quasi-simple filtration (QSF), geometric simple connectivity (GSC), topological inverse-representations, and the notion of…

We define sofic, weakly sofic, linear sofic and hyperlinear metric groups and discuss some issues involving axiomatizability of these classes in continuous logic.

Let $\CaC\subset \Q^p$ be a rational cone. An affine semigroup $S\subset \CaC$ is a $\CaC$-semigroup whenever $(\CaC\setminus S)\cap \N^p$ has only a finite number of elements. In this work, we study the tree of $\CaC$-semigroups, give a…

This article is a survey of conjectures and results on reductive algebraic groups having good reduction at a suitable set of discrete valuations of the base field. Until recently, this subject has received relatively little attention, but…