English

The modular group and words in its two generators

Number Theory 2017-03-28 v5 Combinatorics Group Theory

Abstract

Consider the full modular group PSL2(Z)\sf{PSL}_{2}(\mathbb{Z}) with presentation U,SU3,S2\langle U,S|U^3,S^2\rangle. Motivated by our investigations on quasi-modular forms and the Minkowski question mark function (so that this paper might be considered as a necessary appendix), we are lead to the following natural question. Some words in the alphabet {U,S}\{U,S\} are equal to the unity; for example, USU3SU2USU^3SU^2 is such a word of length 88, and USU3SUSU3S3UUSU^3SUSU^3S^3U is such a word of length 1515. Given nN0n\in\mathbb{N}_{0}. Find the number of words of length nn which are equal to the unity. This is the new entry A265434 into the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. We investigate the generating function of this sequence and prove that it is an algebraic function over Q(x)\mathbb{Q}(x) of degree 33. As an aside, we formulate the problem of describing all algebraic functions with a Fermat property.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1512.02596,
  title  = {The modular group and words in its two generators},
  author = {Giedrius Alkauskas},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1512.02596},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

13 pages, 1 figure. Final version before proofs. A subsection on algebraic functions with a Fermat property was expanded

R2 v1 2026-06-22T12:04:33.123Z