Related papers: On the profinite rigidity of surface groups and su…
The structure of finite and locally finite groups in which every element has prime power order (CP-groups) is well known. In this paper we note that the combination of our earlier results with the available information on the structure of…
For a compact surface $\Sigma$ (orientable or not, and with boundary or not) we show that the fixed subgroup, $\operatorname{Fix} B$, of any family $B$ of endomorphisms of $\pi_1(\Sigma)$ is compressed in $\pi_1(\Sigma)$ i.e.,…
A new bound for the rank of the intersection of finitely generated subgroups of a free group is given, formulated in topological terms, and very much in the spirit of Stallings. The bound is a contribution to (although unfortunately not a…
We establish conditions under which the fundamental group of a graph of finite $p$-groups is necessarily residually $p$-finite. The technique of proof is independent of previously established results of this type, and the result is also…
A subset of a group is characteristic if it is invariant under every automorphism of the group. We study word length in fundamental groups of closed hyperbolic surfaces with respect to characteristic generating sets consisting of a finite…
A central question in dynamics is whether the topology of a system determines its geometry. This is known as rigidity. Under mild topological conditions rigidity holds for many classical cases, including: Kleinian groups, circle…
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…
We introduce and study the bounded word problem and the precise word problem for groups given by means of generators and defining relations. For example, for every finitely presented group, the bounded word problem is in NP, i.e., it can be…
We introduce the notion of residual finiteness for categories. In analogy with the group-theoretic setting, we prove that free categories and finitely generated subcategories of finite-dimensional vector spaces are residually finite.…
We use model theory to study relative profinite rigidity of $3$-manifold groups and show that given any residually finite group $\Gamma$ with finite character variety and single-cusped finite volume hyperbolic $3$-manifold $M$, cofinitely…
We prove that the topological complexity of a finite index subgroup of a hyperbolic group is linear in its index. This follows from a more general result relating the size of the quotient of a free cocompact action of hyperbolic group on a…
In this note, we explore the notion of hyperbolicity of topologically finitely generated profinite groups. Some applications to diophantine geometry are suggested and we try to reformulate certain problems in diophantine geometry in terms…
The main result of this paper is the following theorem. Let q be a prime, A an elementary abelian group of order q^3. Suppose that A acts as a coprime group of automorphisms on a profinite group G in such a manner that C_G(a)' is periodic…
We introduce the condition of a profinite group being semi-free, which is more general than being free and more restrictive than being quasi-free. In particular, every projective semi-free profinite group is free. We prove that the usual…
We show that the following problems are decidable in a rank 2 free group F_2: does a given finitely generated subgroup H contain primitive elements? and does H meet the orbit of a given word u under the action of G, the group of…
We show how to use topological ideas, such as compactness, to establish orderability properties of infinite groups. A new application is to provide a left-ordering for the group of PL homeomorphisms of a connected surface with boundary…
We prove that, given a finitely generated subgroup $H$ of a free group $F$, the following questions are decidable: is $H$ closed (dense) in $F$ for the pro-(met)abelian topology? is the closure of $H$ in $F$ for the pro-(met)abelian…
Semigroups generated by topological operations such as closure, interior or boundary are considered. It is noted that some of these semigroups are in general finite and noncommutative. The problem is formulated whether they are always…
We classify all finite subgroups of the plane Cremona group which have a fixed point. In other words, we determine all rational surfaces X with an action of a finite group G such that X is equivariantly birational to a surface which has a…
A finitely generated group admits a decomposition, called its Grushko decomposition, into a free product of freely indecomposable groups. There is an algorithm to construct the Grushko decomposition of a finite graph of finite rank free…