Related papers: A note on words having the same image on finite gr…

A free-by-cyclic group $F_N\rtimes_\phi\mathbb{Z}$ has non-trivial centre if and only if $[\phi]$ has finite order in ${\rm{Out}}(F_N)$. We establish a profinite ridigity result for such groups: if $\Gamma_1$ is a free-by-cyclic group with…

Given a group word $w$ and a group $G$, the set of $w$-values in $G$ is denoted by $G_w$ and the verbal subgroup $w(G)$ is the one generated by $G_w$. In the present paper we consider profinite groups admitting a word $w$ such that the…

Every word $w$ in a free group naturally induces a probability measure on every compact group $G$. For example, if $w=\left[x,y\right]$ is the commutator word, a random element sampled by the $w$-measure is given by the commutator…

Let $w$ be a multilinear commutator word. In the present paper we describe recent results that show that if $G$ is a profinite group in which all $w$-values are contained in a union of finitely (or in some cases countably) many subgroups…

A group $G$ given by a presentation $G = < \mathcal A \| \mathcal R >$ is called weakly finitely presented if every finitely generated subgroup of $G$, generated by (images of) some words in $\mathcal A^{\pm 1}$, is naturally isomorphic to…

A group word $w$ is said to be strongly concise in a class $\mathscr C$ of profinite groups if, for any group $G$ in $\mathscr C$, either $w$ takes at least continuum values in $G$ or the verbal subgroup $w(G)$ is finite. It is conjectured…

We prove that there exist finitely presented, residually finite groups that are profinitely rigid in the class of all finitely presented groups but not in the class of all finitely generated groups. These groups are of the form $\Gamma…

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…

A word $w$ is said to be concise in a class of groups if, for every $G$ in that class such that the set of $w$-values $w\{G\}$ is finite, the verbal subgroup $w(G)$ is also finite. In the context of profinite groups, the notion of strong…

We consider metric versions of weak soficity, LEF and residual finiteness. The main results of the paper extend Glebsky and Rivera's characterization of weak soficity to the case of normally finitely generated groups with word metrics.…

A group-word $w$ is concise in a class of groups $\mathcal X$ if and only if the verbal subgroup $w(G)$ is finite whenever $w$ takes only finitely many values in a group $G\in \mathcal X$. It is a long-standing open problem whether every…

In the paper we characterize the class of finite solvable groups by two-variable identities in a way similar to the characterization of finite nilpotent groups by Engel identities. More precisely, a sequence of words $u_1,...,u_n,... $ is…

A longstanding question of Gromov asks whether every one-ended word-hyperbolic group contains a subgroup isomorphic to the fundamental group of a closed hyperbolic surface. An infinite family of word-hyperbolic groups can be obtained by…

We define a word in two positive definite (complex Hermitian) matrices $A$ and $B$ as a finite product of real powers of $A$ and $B$. The question of which words have only positive eigenvalues is addressed. This question was raised some…

Examples are given of profinite groups that are not strongly complete, and have other `bad' properties, yet have only finitely many open subgroups of each finite index. It is shown that a profinite group with the latter property must be…

A self-similar group of finite type is the profinite group of all automorphisms of a regular rooted tree that locally around every vertex act as elements of a given finite group of allowed actions. We provide criteria for determining when a…

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…

We give a definition of weakly sofic groups (w-sofic groups). Our definition is rather natural extension of the definition of sofic groups where instead of Hamming metric on symmetric groups we use general bi-invariant metrics on finite…

In this note we prove that if $G$ is a finitely generated profinite group then the verbal subgroup $G^{q}$ is open. Equivalently in a $d$-generator finite group every product of $q$th powers is a product of $f(d,q)$ $q$th powers.

We construct words with small image in a given finite alternating or unimodular group. This shows that word width in these groups is unbounded in general.