Intransitive Cartesian decompositions preserved by innately transitive permutation groups

A permutation group is innately transitive if it has a transitive minimal normal subgroup, which is referred to as a plinth. We study the class of finite, innately transitive permutation groups that can be embedded into wreath products in product action. This investigation is carried out by observing that such a wreath product preserves a natural Cartesian decomposition of the underlying set. Previously we classified the possible embeddings in the case where the innately transitive group projects onto a transitive subgroup of the top group. In this article we prove that the transitivity assumption we made in the previous paper was not too restrictive. Indeed, the image of the projection into the top group can only be intransitive when the finite simple group that is involved in the plinth comes from a small list. Even then, the innately transitive group can have at most three orbits on an invariant Cartesian decomposition. A consequence of this result is that if is an innately transitive subgroup of a wreath product in product action, then the natural projection of into the top group has at most two orbits.

     

Three types of inclusions of innately transitive permutation groups into wreath products in product action

A permutation group is innately transitive if it has a transitive minimal normal subgroup, and this subgroup is called a plinth. In this paper we study three special types of inclusions of innately transitive permutation groups in wreath products in product action. This is achieved by studying the natural Cartesian decomposition of the underlying set that corresponds to the product action of the wreath product. Previously we identified six classes of Cartesian decompositions that can be acted upon transitively by an innately transitive group with a non-abelian plinth. The inclusions studied in this paper correspond to three of the six classes. We find that in each case the isomorphism type of the acting group is restricted, and some interesting combinatorial structures are left invariant. We also give a fairly general construction of inclusions for each type.     

Group factorisations,uniform automorphisms,and permutation groups of simple diagonal type

We present a new proof, which is independent of the finite simple group classification and applies also to infinite groups, that quasiprimitive permutation groups of simple diagonal type cannot be embedded into wreath products in product action. The proof uses several deep results that concern factorisations of direct products involving subdirect subgroups. We find that such factorisations are controlled by the existence of uniform automorphisms.     

Product action

This paper studies the cycle indices of products of permutation groups. The main focus is on the product action of the direct product of permutation groups. The number of orbits of the product on n-tuples is trivial to compute from the numbers of orbits of the factors; on the other hand, computing the cycle index of the product is more intricate. Reconciling the two computations leads to some interesting questions about formal power series. We also discuss what happens for infinite (oligomorphic) groups and give detailed examples. Finally, we briefly turn our attention to generalised wreath products, which are a common generalisation of both the direct product with the product action and the wreath product with the imprimitive action.     

A Characterization of Root Classes of Groups

We prove that a class of groups is root in a sense of K. W. Gruenberg if, and only if, it is closed under subgroups and Cartesian wreath products. Using this result we obtain a condition which is sufficient for the generalized free product of two nilpotent groups to be residual solvable.     

Finite permutation groups containing a transitive abelian subgroup

In this paper, we classify finite permutation groups with a transitive abelian subgroup that are almost simple, quasiprimitive and innately transitive, which extend the results of Li and Praeger that is on finite permutation groups with a transitive cyclic subgroup.     

Isometry groups of non standard metric products

We consider isometry groups of a fairly general class of non standard products of metric spaces. We present sufficient conditions under which the isometry group of a non standard product of metric spaces splits as a permutation group into direct or wreath product of isometry groups of some metric spaces.     

On the isomorphism of wreath products of groups

The well-known Neumann theorem on the isomorphism of standard wreath products is generalized to the wreath products of an arbitrary transitive permutation group and an abstract group. Pedagogical Institute, Vinnitsa. Translated from Ukrainskii Matematicheskii Zhurnal, Vol. 46, No. 6, pp. 671–679, June, 1994     

Double Coset Decompositions of Groups

We show that residually finite or word hyperbolic groups which can be decomposed as a finite union of double cosets of a cyclic subgroup are necessarily virtually cyclic, and we apply this result to the study of Frobenius permutation groups. We show that in general, finite double coset decompositions of a group can be interpreted as an obstruction to splitting a group as a free product with amalgamation or an HNN extension.     

Planar embeddings with infinite faces

We investigate vertex‐transitive graphs that admit planar embeddings having infinite faces, i.e., faces whose boundary is a double ray. In the case of graphs with connectivity exactly 2, we present examples wherein no face is finite. In particular, the planar embeddings of the Cartesian product of the r‐valent tree with K₂ are comprehensively studied and enumerated, as are the automorphisms of the resulting maps, and it is shown for r = 3 that no vertex‐transitive group of graph automorphisms is extendable to a group of homeomorphisms of the plane. We present all known families of infinite, locally finite, vertex‐transitive graphs of connectivity 3 and an infinite family of 4‐connected graphs that admit planar embeddings wherein each vertex is incident with an infinite face. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 42: 257–275, 2003     

On permutation characters of wreath products

It is known that the character rings of symmetric groups S_n and the character rings of hyperoctahedral groups S₂?S_n are generated by (transitive) permutation characters. These results of Young are generalized to wreath products G?H (G a finite group, H a permutation group acting on a finite set). It is shown that the character ring of G?H is generated by permutation characters if this holds for G, H and certain subgroups of H. This result can be sharpened for wreath products G?S_n;if the character ring of G has a basis of transitive permutation characters, then the same holds for the character ring of G?S_n.     

On Primitive Cellular Algebras

First we define and study the exponentiation of a cellular algebra by a permutation group that is similar to the corresponding operation (the wreath product in primitive action) in permutation group theory. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the resulting cellular algebra to be primitive and Schurian are given. This enables us to construct infinite series of primitive non-Schurian algebras. Also we define and study, for cellular algebras, the notion of a base, which is similar to that for permutation groups. We present an upper bound for the size of an irredundant base of a primitive cellular algebra in terms of the parameters of its standard representation. This produces new upper bounds for the order of the automorphism group of such an algebra and in particular for the order of a primitive permutation group. Finally, we generalize to 2-closed primitive algebras some classical theorems for primitive groups and show that the hypothesis for a primitive algebra to be 2-closed is essential. Bibliography: 16 titles.     

The characteristic polynomial of a random permutation matrix at different points

We consider the logarithm of the characteristic polynomial of random permutation matrices, evaluated on a finite set of different points. The permutations are chosen with respect to the Ewens distribution on the symmetric group. We show that the behavior at different points is independent in the limit and are asymptotically normal. Our methods enable us to study also the wreath product of permutation matrices and diagonal matrices with i.i.d. entries and more general class functions on the symmetric group with a multiplicative structure.     

Measure equivalence rigidity and bi-exactness of groups

We get three types of results on measurable group theory; direct product groups of Ozawa's class S groups, wreath product groups and amalgamated free products. We prove measure equivalence factorization results on direct product groups of Ozawa's class S groups. As consequences, Monod-Shalom type orbit equivalence rigidity theorems follow. We prove that if two wreath product groups A?G, B?Γ of non-amenable exact direct product groups G, Γ with amenable bases A, B are measure equivalent, then G and Γ are measure equivalent. We get Bass-Serre rigidity results on amalgamated free products of non-amenable exact direct product groups.     

Wreath products of ordered semigroups

In this paper ordered wreath products of ordered monoids by ordered acts are investigated. In 4. we characterize idempotent isotone wreath products. In 3. the monoid of order preserving endomorphisms of a free ordered act is represented as Cartesian ordered isotone wreath product. Moreover, we give conditions for this wreath product to be I-regular.     

The lumpability property for a family of Markov chains on poset block structures

We construct different classes of lumpings for a family of Markov chain products which reflect the structure of a given finite poset. We essentially use combinatorial methods. We prove that, for such a product, every lumping can be obtained from the action of a suitable subgroup of the generalized wreath product of symmetric groups, acting on the underlying poset block structure, if and only if the poset defining the Markov process is totally ordered, and one takes the uniform Markov operator in each factor state space. Finally we show that, when the state space is a homogeneous space associated with a Gelfand pair, the spectral analysis of the corresponding lumped Markov chain is completely determined by the decomposition of the group action into irreducible submodules.     

The distinguishing number of the direct product and wreath product action

Let G be a group acting faithfully on a set X. The distinguishing number of the action of G on X, denoted D _G(X), is the smallest number of colors such that there exists a coloring of X where no nontrivial group element induces a color-preserving permutation of X. In this paper, we consider the distinguishing number of two important product actions, the wreath product and the direct product. Given groups G and H acting on sets X and Y respectively, we characterize the distinguishing number of the wreath product G ≀_Y H in terms of the number of distinguishing colorings of X with respect to G and the distinguishing number of the action of H on Y. We also prove a recursive formula for the distinguishing number of the action of the Cartesian product of two symmetric groups S _m × S _n on [m] × [n].     

On the embedding of central extensions into permutation wreath products

We find a necessary condition for embedding a central extension of a group G with elementary abelian kernel into the wreath product that corresponds to a given permutation action of G.     

Characters of wreath products and some applications to representation theory and combinatorics

The salient point arising out of a consideration of some seemingly independent topics in representation theory, combinatorics and the theory of numerical polynomials turns out to be a result involving characters of representations of wreath products. The topics are: symmetrized inner products of representations, irreducible characters of wreath products, Frobenius' formula for the irreducible ordinary characters of symmetric groups, the Pólya-Redfield theory of enumeration under group action in combinatorics and results of Rudvalis and Snapper that certain polynomials arising from generalized cycleindices of permutation groups are numerical.     

Finite generation of iterated wreath products

Let (G _n , X _n ) be a sequence of finite transitive permutation groups with uniformly bounded number of generators. We prove that the infinitely iterated permutational wreath product ${\ldots\wr G_2\wr G_1}Let (G _n , X _n ) be a sequence of finite transitive permutation groups with uniformly bounded number of generators. We prove that the infinitely iterated permutational wreath product ?\wr G₂\wr G₁{\ldots\wr G_2\wr G_1} is topologically finitely generated if and only if the profinite abelian group ?_{n 3 1} G_n/G￠_n{\prod_{n\geq 1} G_n/G'_n} is topologically finitely generated. As a corollary, for a finite transitive group G the minimal number of generators of the wreath power G\wr ?\wr G\wr G{G\wr \ldots\wr G\wr G} (n times) is bounded if G is perfect, and grows linearly if G is non-perfect. As a by-product we construct a finitely generated branch group, which has maximal subgroups of infinite index.