Related papers: Conciseness of first-order formulae

We consider the class of groups whose word problem is poly-context-free; that is, an intersection of finitely many context-free languages. We show that any group which is virtually a finitely generated subgroup of a direct product of free…

A group G has restricted centralizers if for each g in G the centralizer C_G(g) either is finite or has finite index in G. A theorem of Shalev states that a profinite group with restricted centralizers is abelian-by-finite. In the present…

Over any partially ordered abelian group whose positive cone is closed in an appropriate sense and has finitely many faces, modules that satisfy a weak finiteness condition admit finite primary decompositions. This conclusion rests on the…

In this paper we initiate a study of first-order rich groups, i.e., groups where the first-order logic has the same power as the weak second order logic. Surprisingly, there are quite a lot of finitely generated rich groups, they are…

We prove that a finite group is rational if and only if it has a set of permutation characters which separate conjugacy classes. It follows from this that a finite group is rational if and only if it has a representation as a permutation…

We show that for any finite group $G$ and for any $d$ there exists a word $w\in F_{d}$ such that a $d$-tuple in $G$ satisfies $w$ if and only if it generates a solvable subgroup. In particular, if $G$ itself is not solvable, then it cannot…

We prove that a random group, in Gromov's density model with $d < 1/16$ satisfies with overwhelming probability a universal-existential first-order sentence $\sigma$ (in the language of groups) if and only if $\sigma$ is true in a…

In this paper we show that there exists an uncountable family of finitely generated simple groups with the same positive theory as any non-abelian free group. In particular, these simple groups have infinite $w$-verbal width for all…

It is known that there exists a first-order sentence that holds in a finite group if and only if the group is soluble. Here it is shown that the corresponding statements with 'solubility' replaced by 'nilpotence' and 'perfectness', among…

Let $w = w(x_1,..., x_n)$ be a word, i.e. an element of the free group $F =<x_1,...,x_n>$ on $n$ generators $x_1,..., x_n$. The verbal subgroup $w(G)$ of a group $G$ is the subgroup generated by the set $\{w (g_1,...,g_n)^{\pm 1} | g_i \in…

Let w be a multilinear commutator word. We prove that if e is a positive integer and G is a finite group in which any nilpotent subgroup generated by w-values has exponent dividing e then the exponent of the corresponding verbal subgroup…

Following Isaacs (see [Isa08, p. 94]), we call a normal subgroup N of a finite group G large, if $C_G(N) \leq N$, so that N has bounded index in G. Our principal aim here is to establish some general results for systematically producing…

For a family of group words $w$ we show that if $G$ is a profinite group in which all $w$-values are contained in a union of finitely many subgroups with a prescribed property, then $w(G)$ has the same property as well. In particular, we…

Let w be a multilinear commutator and n a positive integer. Suppose that G is a residually finite group in which every product of at most 896 w-values has order dividing n. Then the verbal subgroup w(G) is locally finite.

We discuss the decomposability of torsion-free abelian groups. We show that among computable groups of finite rank this property is $\Sigma^0_3$-complete. However, when we consider groups of infinite rank, it becomes $\Sigma^1_1$-complete,…

Anisimov and Seifert show that a group has a regular word problem ifand only if it is finite. Muller and Schupp (together with Dunwoody's accessibility result) show that a group has context free word problem if and only if it is virtually…

This is the second installment of an exposition of an ACL2 formalization of finite group theory. The first, which was presented at the 2022 ACL2 workshop, covered groups and subgroups, cosets, normal subgroups, and quotient groups,…

We investigate two notions about descriptions of groups using first-order language: quasi-finite axiomatizability, concerning infinite groups, and polylogarithmic compressibility, concerning classes of finite groups.

We show that a first-order sentence is almost surely true in a random group of density d<1/2 if and only if it is true in a non-abelian free group.

We establish new characterizations of primitive elements and free factors in free groups, which are based on the distributions they induce on finite groups. For every finite group $G$, a word $w$ in the free group on $k$ generators induces…