Related papers: Beauville surfaces and probabilistic group theory

We study the problem of determining the groups that can arise as the torsion subgroup of an elliptic curve over a fixed quadratic field, building on work of Kamienny-Najman, Krumm, and Trbovi\'c. By employing techniques to study rational…

Let X be a smooth double cover of a geometrically ruled surface defined over a separably closed field of characteristic different from 2. The main result of this paper is a finite presentation of the 2-torsion in the Brauer group of X with…

Let $X$ be one of the $28$ Atkin-Lehner quotients of a curve $X_0(N)$ such that $X$ has genus $2$ and its Jacobian variety $J$ is absolutely simple. We show that the Shafarevich-Tate group of $J/\mathbb{Q}$ is trivial. This verifies the…

In these lectures we consider how algebraic properties of discrete subgroups of Lie groups restrict the possible actions of those groups on surfaces. The results show a strong parallel between the possible actions of such a group on the…

Let I(p,v) be Bourdon's building, the unique simply-connected 2-complex such that all 2-cells are regular right-angled hyperbolic p-gons and the link at each vertex is the complete bipartite graph K(v,v). We investigate and mostly determine…

We consider the Brauer-Manin obstruction to the existence of integral points on affine surfaces defined by $x^2 - ay^2 = P(t)$ over a number field. We enumerate the possibilities for the Brauer groups of certain families of such surfaces,…

We prove that there is no algorithm that can determine whether or not a finitely presented group has a non-trivial finite quotient; indeed, this remains undecidable among the fundamental groups of compact, non-positively curved square…

This is an English translation of the author's 1989 note in Russian, published in a collection "Arithmetic and Geometry of Varieties" (V.E. Voskresenski, ed.), Kuibyshev State University, Kuibyshev, 1989, pp. 57--67. Let $X$ be be an…

In this paper we describe how to explicitly construct infinitely many finite simple groups as characteristic quotients of the rank 2 free group $F_2$. This shows that a "baby" version of the Wiegold conjecture fails for $F_2$, and provides…

We show that for a K3 surface X the finitely generated subring R(X) of the Chow ring introduced by Beauville and Voisin is preserved under derived equivalences. This is proved by analyzing Chern characters of spherical bundles. As for a K3…

If $G$ is a Grigorchuk-Gupta-Sidki group defined over a $p$-adic tree, where $p$ is an odd prime, we study the existence of Beauville surfaces associated to the quotients of $G$ by its level stabilizers $\st_G(n)$. We prove that if $G$ is…

The Bloch-Beilinson-Murre conjectures predict the existence of a descending filtration on Chow groups of smooth projective varieties which is functorial with respect to the action of correspondences and whose graded parts depend solely on…

Chevalley's theorem states that every smooth connected algebraic group over a perfect field is an extension of an abelian variety by a smooth connected affine group. That fails when the base field is not perfect. We define a pseudo-abelian…

We study the distribution of products of conjugacy classes in finite simple groups, obtaining various effective uniformity results, which give rise to an approximation to a conjecture of Thompson. Our results, combined with work of Gowers…

We prove two results on some special generators of finite simple groups and use them to prove that every non-abelian finite simple group $S$ admits a non-congruence presentation (as conjectured in [CLT24]), and that if $S$ has a non-trivial…

A result of Beauville states that with a few positive characterstic exceptions, the smooth hyperplane sections of hypersurfaces of degree $d>2$ in projective space are not all isomorphic. We address the question of whether these sections…

We propose a general conjecture on decompositions of finite simple groups as products of conjugates of an arbitrary subset. We prove this conjecture for bounded subsets of arbitrary finite simple groups, and for large subsets of groups of…

We classify simple groups that act by birational transformations on compact complex K\"ahler surfaces. Moreover, we show that every finitely generated simple group that acts non-trivially by birational transformations on a projective…

It is shown that various questions about the existence of simple closed curves in normal subgroups of surface groups are undecidable.

Let $\mathcal X$ be a regular variety, flat and proper over a complete regular curve over a finite field, such that the generic fiber $X$ is smooth and geometrically connected. We prove that the Brauer group of $\mathcal X$ is finite if and…