English

Soficity, short cycles and the Higman group

Group Theory 2017-11-02 v4 Number Theory

Abstract

This is a paper with two aims. First, we show that the map from Z/pZ\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z} to itself defined by exponentiation xmxx\to m^x has few 33-cycles -- that is to say, the number of cycles of length three is o(p)o(p). This improves on previous bounds. Our second objective is to contribute to an ongoing discussion on how to find a non-sofic group. In particular, we show that, if the Higman group were sofic, there would be a map from Z/pZ\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z} to itself, locally like an exponential map, yet satisfying a recurrence property.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1512.02135,
  title  = {Soficity, short cycles and the Higman group},
  author = {Harald A. Helfgott and Kate Juschenko},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1512.02135},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

27 pages. Revised version. We address results by Glebsky and Kassabov-Kuperberg-Riley that go against the heuristic, allowing for the construction of functions that behave like $x\to m^x$, $m\ne 2$ and satisfy a recurrence property

R2 v1 2026-06-22T12:03:27.446Z