On profinite groups in which commutators are covered by finitely many subgroups

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 the verbal subgroup w(G) has the same property as well. In particular, we show this in the case where the subgroups are periodic or of finite rank. If G contains finitely many subgroups G ₁, G ₂, . . . , G _s of finite exponent e whose union contains all γ _k -values in G, it is shown that γ _k (G) has finite (e, k, s)-bounded exponent. If G contains finitely many subgroups G ₁, G ₂, . . . , G _s of finite rank r whose union contains all γ _k -values, it is shown that γ _k (G) has finite (k, r, s)-bounded rank.     

Fusion in profinite groups

In this paper the concepts of control of transfer and fusion are introduced in the context of profinite groups. It is proved that a powerful Sylow p-subgroup controls transfer and that if the subgroup generated by the torsion elements of a Sylow p-subgroup is uniform, then it controls fusion. Dedicated to the memory of Valeria Fedri Entrata in Redazione il 6 novembre 1998. Research partially supported by ex 40%–60% funds.     

On quasifree profinite groups

Recently, it has been shown by Harbater and Stevenson that a profinite group is free profinite of infinite rank if and only if is projective and -quasifree. The latter condition requires the existence of distinct solutions to certain embedding problems for . In this paper we provide several new non-trivial examples of -quasifree groups, projective and non-projective. Our main result is that open subgroups of -quasifree groups are -quasifree.

     

Permutation modules of profinite groups

Given an arbitrary profinite group G and a commutative domain R, we define the notion of permutation RG-module which generalizes the known notion from the representation theory of profinite groups. We establish an independence theorem of such a module as an R-module over a ring of scalars.     

Isometry types of profinite groups

Let T be a rooted tree and Iso(T) be the group of its isometries. We study closed subgroups G of Iso(T) with respect to the number of conjugacy classes of Iso(T) having representatives in G.     

Modular representations of profinite groups

Our aim is to transfer several foundational results from the modular representation theory of finite groups to the wider context of profinite groups. We are thus interested in profinite modules over the completed group algebra of a profinite group G, where k is a finite field of characteristic p.We define the concept of relative projectivity for a profinite -module. We prove a characterization of finitely generated relatively projective modules analogous to the finite case with additions of interest to the profinite theory. We introduce vertices and sources for indecomposable finitely generated -modules and show that the expected conjugacy properties hold—for sources this requires additional assumptions. Finally we prove a direct analogue of Green’s Indecomposability Theorem for finitely generated modules over a virtually pro-p group.     

Finite index subgroups in profinite groups

We prove that every subgroup of finite index in a (topologically) finitely generated profinite group is open. This implies that the topology in such a group is uniquely determined by the group structure. The result follows from a ‘uniformity theorem’ about finite groups: given a group word w that defines a locally finite variety and a natural number d, there exists f=f_w(d) such that in every finite d-generator group G, each element of the verbal subgroup w(G) is a product of fw-values. Similar methods show that in a finite d-generator group, each element of the derived group is a product of g(d) commutators; this implies that the (abstract) derived group in any finitely generated profinite group is closed. To cite this article: N. Nikolov, D. Segal, C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I 337 (2003).     

Positively finitely related profinite groups

We define and study the class of positively finitely related (PFR) profinite groups. Positive finite relatedness is a probabilistic property of profinite groups which provides a first step to defining higher finiteness properties of profinite groups which generalize the positively finitely generated groups introduced by Avinoam Mann. We prove many asymptotic characterisations of PFR groups, for instance we show the following: a finitely presented profinite group is PFR if and only if it has at most exponential representation growth, uniformly over finite fields (in other words: the completed group algebra has polynomial maximal ideal growth). From these characterisations we deduce several structural results on PFR profinite groups.     

An arithmetic property of profinite groups

We intend to generalize a crucial lemma of [4] to prove a somewhat surprising arithmetic property of profinite groups; namely, that a profinite group G has nontrivial p-Sylow-subgroups for only a finite number of primes if and only if this is true for its procyclic subgroups. This will yield as a corollary that every profinite torsion group has finite exponent if and only if this is true for its Sylow-sub-groups, a result also contained in [4].     

Maximal subgroups in finite and profinite groups

We prove that if a finitely generated profinite group is not generated with positive probability by finitely many random elements, then every finite group is obtained as a quotient of an open subgroup of . The proof involves the study of maximal subgroups of profinite groups, as well as techniques from finite permutation groups and finite Chevalley groups. Confirming a conjecture from Ann. of Math. 137 (1993), 203--220, we then
prove that a finite group has at most maximal soluble subgroups, and show that this result is rather useful in various enumeration problems.

     

Commutators and pronilpotent subgroups in profinite groups

Let \(G\) be a profinite group in which all pronilpotent subgroups generated by commutators are periodic. We prove that \(G^{\prime }\) is locally finite.     

Projective discrete modules over profinite groups

We show that the category of discrete modules over an infinite profinite group has no non-zero projective objects and does not satisfy Ab4*. We also prove the same types of results in a generalized setting using a ring with linear topology.