Related papers: Distortion in groups of generalized piecewise-line…

Let X be a path-connected topological space admitting a universal cover. Let Homeo(X,a) denote the group of homeomorphisms of X preserving degree one cohomology class a. We investigate the distortion in Homeo(X,a). Let g be an element of…

Distortions are ubiquitous in nature. Under perturbations such as stresses, fields, or other changes, a physical system reconfigures by following a path from one state to another; this path, often a collection of atomic trajectories,…

We consider the group of smooth diffeomorphisms of the circle. We show that any recurrent $f$ (in the sense that $\{f^n\}_{n \in Z}$ is not discrete) is in fact a distortion element (in the sense that its iterates can be written as short…

We exhibit rigid rotations of spheres as distortion elements in groups of diffeomorphisms, thereby answering a question of J Franks and M Handel. We also show that every homeomorphism of a sphere is, in a suitable sense, as distorted as…

We build the first examples of diffeomorphisms that are distorted in a group of $C^r$ diffeomorphisms yet undistorted in the corresponding group of $C^s$ diffeomorphisms, where $r < s$. This explicit construction is performed for the closed…

We study distortion of elements in two-dimensional Cremona groups over algebraically closed fields of characteristic zero. Namely, we obtain the following trichotomy: non-elliptic elements (i.e., those whose powers have unbounded degree)…

Let $G$ be the group ${\rm PAff}_+({\bf S}^1)$ of piecewise--affine circle homeomorphisms or the group ${\Diff}^{\infty}(\mathbb R/\mathbb Z)$ of smooth circle diffeomorphisms. A constructive proof that all irrational rotations are…

We show that a group whose generalized torsion elements are torsion elements (which we call a $TR^{*}$-group) is torsion-by-$R^{*}$ group, an extension of torsion group by a group without generalized torsion elements. We also discuss a…

A non-trivial element of a group is a generalized torsion element if some products of its conjugates is the identity. The minimum number of such conjugates is called a generalized torsion order. We provide several restrictions for…

Let S be a compact orientable surface and f be an element of the group Homeo_{0}(S) of homeomorphisms of S isotopic to the identity. Denote by F a lift of f to the universal cover of S. In this article, the following result is proved: if…

A group element is called a generalized torsion if a finite product of its conjugates is equal to the identity. We prove that in a nilpotent or FC-group, the generalized torsion elements are all torsion elements. Moreover, we compute the…

It is shown that there exist infinitely many non-integers $r>2$ such that the Dehn function of some finitely presented group is $\simeq n^r$. For each positive rational number $s$ we construct pairs of finitely presented groups $H\subset G$…

An element of a group is said to be reversible if it is conjugate to its inverse. We characterise the reversible elements in the group of diffeomorphisms of the real line, and in the subgroup of order preserving diffeomorphisms.

In this article, we characterize the distortion elements of the group of smooth diffeomorphisms of the circle and of the group of compactly supported smooth diffeomorphisms of the real line. More precisely, we prove that, in this context,…

A group element is called generalized torsion if a finite product of its conjugates is equal to the identity. We show that in a finitely generated abelian-by-finite group, an element is generalized torsion if and only if its image in the…

For a linear transformation A from Rn to Rn, we give sharp bounds for the average distortion of A, that is, the average value of log of the euclidean norm of Au over all unit vectors u. This is closely related to the results of the author's…

The classical derangement numbers count fixed point-free permutations. In this paper we study the enumeration problem of generalized derangements, when some of the elements are restricted to be in distinct cycles in the cycle decomposition.…

If $\G$ is a finitely generated group with generators $\{g_1,...,g_j\}$ then an infinite order element $f \in \G$ is a {\em distortion element} of $\G$ provided $\displaystyle{\liminf_{n \to \infty} |f^n|/n = 0,}$ where $|f^n|$ is the word…

Several elementary properties of the symmetric group $S_n$ extend in a nice way to the full transformation monoid $M_n$ of all maps of the set $X:=\{1,2,3,\dots,n\}$ into itself. The group $S_n$ turns out to be in some sense the torsion…

We show that there is a distortion element in a finitely-generated subgroup $G$ of the automorphism group of the full shift, namely an element of infinite order whose word norm grows polylogarithmically. As a corollary, we obtain a lower…