Related papers: Towards a CFSG-free diameter bound for $\mathrm{Al…

Given a finite group $G$ and a set $A$ of generators, the diameter diam$(\Gamma(G,A))$ of the Cayley graph $\Gamma(G,A)$ is the smallest $\ell$ such that every element of $G$ can be expressed as a word of length at most $\ell$ in $A \cup…

Following Babai's algorithm for the string isomorphism problem, we determine that it is possible to write expressions of short length describing certain permutation cosets, including all permutation subgroups; this is feasible both in the…

Babai's conjecture states that, for any finite simple non-abelian group $G$, the diameter of $G$ is bounded by $(\log|G|)^{C}$ for some absolute constant $C$. We prove that, for any untwisted classical group $G$ of rank $r$ defined over a…

By now, we have a product theorem in every finite simple group $G$ of Lie type, with the strength of the bound depending only in the rank of $G$. Such theorems have numerous consequences: bounds on the diameters of Cayley graphs, spectral…

For a finite group $G$, let $\mathrm{diam}(G)$ denote the maximum diameter of a connected Cayley graph of $G$. A well-known conjecture of Babai states that $\mathrm{diam}(G)$ is bounded by ${(\log_{2} |G|)}^{O(1)}$ in case $G$ is a…

We obtain a weaker but still quasipolynomial version of Babai's famous GI-algorithm.

The union-closed sets conjecture states that in any nonempty union-closed family $\mathcal{F}$ of subsets of a finite set, there exists an element contained in at least a proportion $1/2$ of the sets of $\mathcal{F}$. Using the…

We prove a strong general-purpose bound for the diameter of a finite group depending only on the diameters of its composition factors and the maximal exponent of a normal abelian section. There are a number of notable applications: (1) if…

We investigate faithful representations of $\operatorname{Alt}(n)$ as automorphisms of a connected group $G$ of finite Morley rank. We target a lower bound of $n$ on the rank of such a nonsolvable $G$, and our main result achieves this in…

A word is called carefully synchronising for a partial deterministic finite semi-automaton if it maps all states to the same state. Equivalently, it is a composition of partial transformations equal to a constant total transformation. There…

We prove strong and explicit diameter bounds for finite simple Lie algebras, which parallel Babai's conjecture for finite simple groups. Specifically, we show that any nonabelian finite simple Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$ over $\mathbf{F}_p$…

Let $G$ be a finite classical group generated by transvections, i.e., one of $\operatorname{SL}_n(q)$, $\operatorname{SU}_n(q)$, $\operatorname{Sp}_{2n}(q)$, or $\operatorname{O}^\pm_{2n}(q)$ ($q$ even), and let $X$ be a generating set for…

Let $f$ and $g$ be Boolean functions over a finite Abelian group $\mathcal{G}$, where $g$ is fully known, and we have {\em query access} to $f$, that is, given any $x \in \mathcal{G}$ we can get the value $f(x)$. We study the tolerant…

We revisit the main result of Carmosino et al \cite{CILM18} which shows that an $\Omega(n^{\omega/2+\epsilon})$ size noncommutative arithmetic circuit size lower bound (where $\omega$ is the matrix multiplication exponent) for a…

We give a new fpt algorithm testing isomorphism of $n$-vertex graphs of tree width $k$ in time $2^{k\operatorname{polylog} (k)}\operatorname{poly} (n)$, improving the fpt algorithm due to Lokshtanov, Pilipczuk, Pilipczuk, and Saurabh (FOCS…

We prove that the diameter of threshold (zero temperature) Geometric Inhomogeneous Random Graphs (GIRG) is $\Theta(\log n)$. This has strong implications for the runtime of many distributed protocols on those graphs, which often have…

We prove a version of Jordan's classification theorem for finite subgroups of $\mathrm{GL}_{n}(K)$ that is at the same time quantitatively explicit, CFSG-free, and valid for arbitrary $K$. This is the first proof to satisfy all three…

Let $G$ be either the Grigorchuk $2$-group or one of the Gupta-Sidki $p$-groups. We give new upper bounds for the diameters of the quotients of $G$ by its level stabilisers, as well as other natural sequences of finite-index normal…

Let $\Gamma$ be a Cayley graph of the permutation group generated by a transposition tree $T$ on $n$ vertices. In an oft-cited paper \cite{Akers:Krishnamurthy:1989} (see also \cite{Hahn:Sabidussi:1997}), it is shown that the diameter of the…

The threshold degree of a Boolean function f:{0,1}^n->{-1,+1} is the least degree of a real polynomial p such that f(x)=sgn p(x). We construct two halfspaces on {0,1}^n whose intersection has threshold degree Theta(sqrt n), an exponential…