Related papers: The quaternion group as a subgroup of the sphere b…

Following previous work on congruence subgroups and crystallographic braid groups, we study the lower central series of congruence braid groups related to the braid group $B_3$, showing in particular that corresponding quotients are almost…

We show that two knots have matching Vassiliev invariants of order less than n if and only if they are equivalent modulo the nth group of the lower central series of some pure braid group, thus characterizing Vassiliev's knot invariants in…

We say that a loop is unbreakable when it does not have nontrivial subloops. While the cyclic groups of prime order are the only unbreakable finite groups, we show that nonassociative unbreakable loops exist for every order n >= 5. We…

We prove that quadratical quasigroups form a variety Q of right and left simple groupoids. New examples of quadratical quasigroups of orders 25 and 29 are given. The fine structure of quadratical quasigroups and inter-relationships between…

The purpose of this paper is to prove that if $G$ is a transitive permutation group of degree $n\geq 2$, then $G$ can be generated by $\lfloor cn/\sqrt{\log{n}}\rfloor$ elements, where $c:=\sqrt{3}/2$. Owing to the transitive group…

We investigate the problem of defining group or loop structures on spheres, where by ''sphere'' we mean the level set q(x) = c of a general K-valued quadratic form q, for an invertible scalar c. When K is a field and q non-degenerate, then…

Let $M$ be an $n$-vertex combinatorial triangulation of a $\ZZ_2$-homology $d$-sphere. In this paper we prove that if $n \leq d + 8$ then $M$ must be a combinatorial sphere. Further, if $n = d + 9$ and $M$ is not a combinatorial sphere then…

A finite group $G$ is called a Schur group if every Schur ring over $G$ is schurian, i.e. associated in a natural way with a subgroup of the symmetric group $Sym(G)$ that contains all right translations of $G$. The list of all possible…

The Donald-Flanigan conjecture asserts that for any finite group and for any field, the corresponding group algebra can be deformed to a separable algebra. The minimal unsolved instance, namely the quaternion group over a field of…

It is proved that every group of the form $G=AB$ with two subgroups $A$ and $B$ each of which is either abelian or has a quasicyclic subgroup of index $2$ is soluble of derived length at most $3$. In particular, if $A$ is abelian and $B$ is…

We prove a general divisibility theorem that implies, e.g., that, in any group, the number of generating pairs (as well as triples, etc.) is a multiple of the order of the commutator subgroup. Another corollary says that, in any associative…

Let $R$ be a ring with ${\bf 1}$ which is not commutative. Assume that a non-zero commutator in $R$ is not a zero divisor. Assume further that either $R$ is alternative, but not associative, or $R$ is associative and any commutator $v\in R$…

We consider three families of groups: the Bianchi groups SL(2,O) where O is the ring of integers of an imaginary, quadratic field; the groups SL*(2,O) where O is a *-order of a definite, rational quaternion algebra with an orthogonal…

Given a subset $S$ of the non-identity elements of the dihedral group of order $2m$, is it possible to order the elements of $S$ so that the partial products are distinct? This is equivalent to the sequenceability of the group when $|S| =…

Let $G$ be a finite group and $S$ be a subset of $G$. The bi-Cayley graph $\mathrm{BCay}(G,S)$ is the graph with vertex set $G\times \{0,1\}$ and edge set $\{\{(x,0),(sx,1)\}\mid x\in G,s\in S\}$. A bi-Cayley graph $\mathrm{BCay}(G,S)$ is…

In this note, we consider irreducible semigroups of real, complex, and quaternionic matrices with real spectra. We prove Burnside type theorems in the settings of reals and quaternions. First, we prove that an irreducible semigroup of…

We consider the class of algebras of rank 4 equipped with a standard involution over an arbitrary base ring. In particular, we characterize quaternion rings, those algebras defined by the construction of the even Clifford algebra.

We solve the isomorphism problem for braid groups on trees with $n = 4$ or 5 strands. We do so in three main steps, each of which is interesting in its own right. First, we establish some tools and terminology for dealing with computations…

It is shown that a finite group in which more than 3/4 of the elements are involutions must be an elementary abelian 2-group. A group in which exactly 3/4 of the elements are involutions is characterized as the direct product of the…

Let $G$ be a finite group and $\alpha(G)=\frac{|C(G)|}{|G|}$\,, where $C(G)$ denotes the set of cyclic subgroups of $G$. In this short note, we prove that $\alpha(G)\leq\alpha(Z(G))$ and we describe the groups $G$ for which the equality…