Related papers: Almost all alternating groups are invariably gener…

Suppose that A is a subset of {1,...,N} such that the difference between any two elements of A is never one less than a prime. We show that |A| = O(N exp(-c(log N)^{1/4})) for some absolute c>0.

The famous strongly binary Goldbach's conjecture asserts that every even number $2n \geq 8$ can always be expressible as the sum of two distinct odd prime numbers. We use a new approach to dealing with this conjecture. Specifically, we…

Motivated by expansion in Cayley graphs, we show that there exist infinitely many groups $G$ with a nontrivial irreducible unitary representation whose average over every set of $o(\log\log|G|)$ elements of $G$ has operator norm $1 - o(1)$.…

Let $G$ be a $(2,m,n)$-group and let $x$ be the number of distinct primes dividing $\chi$, the Euler characteristic of $G$. We prove, first, that, apart from a finite number of known exceptions, a non-abelian simple composition factor $T$…

By a classical theorem of Jordan, every faithful transitive action of a nontrivial finite group has a derangement (an element with no fixed points). The existence of derangements with additional properties has attracted much attention,…

This article concerns the $p$-basic set existence problem in the representation theory of finite groups. We show that, for any odd prime $p$, the alternating group $\A_n$ has a $p$-basic set. More precisely, we prove that the symmetric…

An element of a finitely generated non-Abelian free group F(X) is said to be filling if that element has positive translation length in every very small action of F(X) on an $\mathbb{R}$-tree. We give a proof that the set of filling…

The main theorem in this article shows that a group of odd order which admits the alternating group of degree 5 with an element of order 5 acting fixed point freely is nilpotent of class at most two. For all odd primes r, other than 5, we…

We prove a result on the asymptotic proportion of randomly chosen pairs of permutations in the symmetric group $S_n$ which "invariably" generate a nonsolvable subgroup, i.e., whose cycle structures cannot possibly both occur in the same…

An infinite linearly ordered set (S,<=) is called doubly homogeneous if its automorphism group A(S) acts 2-transitively on it. We show that any group G arises as outer automorphism group G cong Out(A(S)) of the automorphism group A(S), for…

In this short note we prove that, if $p$ is an odd prime dividing the order of a sporadic simple group, then with the exception of four groups for $p=3$, all sporadic simple groups are generated by an involution and an element of order $p$.

Let $\mathcal C$ be a set of finite groups which is closed under taking subgroups and let $d$ and $M$ be positive integers. Suppose that for any $G\in\mathcal C$ whose order is divisible by at most two distinct primes there exists an…

A (2,*)-group is a group that can be generated by two elements, one of which is an involution. We describe the method we have used to produce a census of all (2,*)-groups of order at most 6 000. Various well-known combinatorial structures…

A subset $\{g_1, \ldots , g_d\}$ of a finite group $G$ is said to invariably generate $G$ if the set $\{g_1^{x_1}, \ldots, g_d^{x_d}\}$ generates $G$ for every choice of $x_i \in G$. The Chebotarev invariant $C(G)$ of $G$ is the expected…

A finite group $G$ is \emph{coprimely-invariably generated} if there exists a set of generators $\{g_1, ..., g_u\}$ of $G$ with the property that the orders $|g_1|, ..., |g_u|$ are pairwise coprime and that for all $x_1, ..., x_u \in G$ the…

In this note we provide some counterexamples for the conjecture of Moret\'{o} on finite simple groups, which says that any finite simple group $G$ can determined in terms of its order $|G|$ and the number of elements of order $p$, where $p$…

Let $G$ be a transitive permutation group acting on a finite set $\Omega$ with $|\Omega|\geqslant 2$. An element of $G$ is said to be a derangement if it has no fixed points on $\Omega$, and by a theorem of Jordan from 1872, $G$ always…

We study `good elements' in finite $2n$-dimensional classical groups $G$: namely $t$ is a `good element' if $o(t)$ is divisible by a primitive prime divisor of $q^n-1$ for the relevant field order $q$, and $t$ fixes pointwise an $n$-space.…

For every prime $p$, we construct an infinite countable group that contains precisely $p-1$ elements which are not $p$th powers.

For every odd prime $p$ and every integer $n\geq 12$ there is a Heisenberg group of order $p^{5n/4+O(1)}$ that has $p^{n^2/24+O(n)}$ pairwise nonisomorphic quotients of order $p^{n}$. Yet, these quotients are virtually indistinguishable.…