Related papers: A remark on the word length in surface groups

We characterize constant mean curvature surfaces in the three-dimensional Heisenberg group by a family of flat connections on the trivial bundle $\D \times \GL$ over a simply connected domain $\mathbb{D}$ in the complex plane. In particular…

In "On the asymptotics of the growth of 2-step nilpotent groups" (J. London Math. Soc. (2), 58 (1998)), we remarked that, contrary to 2-step nilpotent simply connected Lie groups, in 3-step nilpotent simply connected Lie groups it is…

We establish bounds on the minimal asymptotic pseudo-Anosov translation lengths on the complex of curves of orientable surfaces. In particular, for a closed surface with genus $g \geqslant 2$, we show that there are positive constants $a_1…

We prove sharp limit theorems on random walks on graphs with values in finite groups. We then apply these results (together with some elementary algebraic geometry, number theory, and representation theory) to finite quotients of lattices…

In this paper, we prove that every non-elementary subgroup of the mapping class group of a surface has non-arithmetic Teichm\"uller length spectrum. Namely, Teichm\"uller translation lengths of its pseudo-Anosov elements generate a dense…

Let $G$ be a hyperbolic group that splits as a graph of free groups with cyclic edge groups. We prove that, unless $G$ is isomorphic to a free product of free and surface groups, every finite abelian group $M$ appears as a direct summand in…

By virtue of linguistic compositionality, few syntactic rules and a finite lexicon can generate an unbounded number of sentences. That is, language, though seemingly high-dimensional, can be explained using relatively few degrees of…

We propose a distributional theory of how hypernymy -- the ``is-a'' relation between general and specific concepts -- is encoded geometrically in language representations. Starting from the empirically verified assumption that words closer…

We estimate the $n$-gram entropies of natural language texts in word-length representation and find that these are sensitive to text language and genre. We attribute this sensitivity to changes in the probability distribution of the lengths…

We consider smooth surfaces $S \subset \Pq$ containing a plane curve $P$ and prove some general result concerning the linear system $|H-P|$. We then look at regular surfaces lying on hypersurfaces of degree $s$ having a plane of…

Quantitative linguistics has provided us with a number of empirical laws that characterise the evolution of languages and competition amongst them. In terms of language usage, one of the most influential results is Zipf's law of word…

The point-pushing subgroup P(S) of the mapping class group Mod(S) of a surface with marked point is an embedding of \pi_1(S) given by pushing the marked point around loops. We prove that for g>=3, the subgroup P(S) is the unique normal,…

The fundamental group of the Menger universal curve is uncountable and not free, although all of its finitely generated subgroups are free. It contains an isomorphic copy of the fundamental group of every one-dimensional separable metric…

We compute the expected number of commutations appearing in a reduced word for the longest element in the symmetric group. The asymptotic behavior of this value is analyzed and shown to approach the length of the permutation, meaning that…

On a connected surface $N$ with negative Euler characteristic, the free homotopy class of a loop obtained by smoothing an intersection of two closed geodesics may wind around a puncture. Chas and Kabiraj showed that this phenomenon does not…

We show that every word hyperbolic, surface-by-(noncyclic) free group Gamma is as rigid as possible: the quasi-isometry group of Gamma equals the abstract commensurator group Comm(Gamma), which in turn contains Gamma as a finite index…

In this survey, we describe recent progress on asymptotic properties of various automorphic orbits in free groups. In particular, we address the problem of counting potentially positive elements of a given length. We also discuss complexity…

We study the word image of words with constants in ${\rm GL}(V)$ and show that it is large provided the word satisfies some natural conditions on its length and its critical constants. There are various consequences: We prove that for every…

We study dynamical systems arising from word maps on simple groups. We develop a geometric method based on the classical trace map for investigating periodic points of such systems. These results lead to a new approach to the search of…

We introduce and study a complexity function on words $c_x(n),$ called \emph{cyclic complexity}, which counts the number of conjugacy classes of factors of length $n$ of an infinite word $x.$ We extend the well-known Morse-Hedlund theorem…