Fourier analysis of subgroup conjugacy invariant functions on finite groups

Given a finite group $G$ and a subgroup $H\le G$ , we develop a Fourier analysis for $H$ -conjugacy invariant functions on $G$ , without the assumption that $H$ is a multiplicity-free subgroup of $G$ . We also study the Fourier transform for functions in the center of the algebra of $H$ -conjugacy invariant functions on $G$ . We show that a recent calculation of Cesi is indeed a Fourier transform of a function in the center of the algebra of functions on the symmetric group that are conjugacy invariant with respect to a Young subgroup.     

Minimal subgroups and the structure of finite groups

A subgroup $H$ of a finite group $G$ is weakly-supplemented in $G$ if there exists a proper subgroup $K$ of $G$ such that $G=HK$ . In this paper we prove that a finite group $G$ is $p$ -nilpotent if every minimal subgroup of $P\bigcap G^{N}$ is weakly-supplemented in $G$ , and when $p=2$ either every cyclic subgroup of $P\bigcap G^{N}$ with order 4 is weakly-supplemented in $G$ or $P$ is quaternion-free, where $p$ is the smallest prime number dividing the order of $G$ , $P$ a sylow $p$ -subgroup of $G$ .     

Volume invariant and maximal representations of discrete subgroups of Lie groups

Let $\Gamma $ be a lattice in a connected semisimple Lie group $G$ with trivial center and no compact factors. We introduce a volume invariant for representations of $\Gamma $ into $G$ , which generalizes the volume invariant for representations of uniform lattices introduced by Goldman. Then, we show that the maximality of this volume invariant exactly characterizes discrete, faithful representations of $\Gamma $ into $G$ .     

p-Groups with few conjugacy classes of normalizers

For a group $G$ , denote by $\omega (G)$ the number of conjugacy classes of normalizers of subgroups of $G$ . Clearly, $\omega (G)=1$ if and only if $G$ is a Dedekind group. Hence if $G$ is a 2-group, then $G$ is nilpotent of class $\le 2$ and if $G$ is a $p$ -group, $p>2$ , then $G$ is abelian. We prove a generalization of this. Let $G$ be a finite $p$ -group with $\omega (G)\le p+1$ . If $p=2$ , then $G$ is of class $\le 3$ ; if $p>2$ , then $G$ is of class $\le 2$ .     

A Question from a Famous Paper of Erdős

Given a convex body $K$ K , consider the smallest number $N$ N so that there is a point $P\in \partial K$ P ∈ ? K such that every circle centred at $P$ P intersects $\partial K$ ? K in at most $N$ N points. In 1946 Erd?s conjectured that $N=2$ N = 2 for all $K$ K , but there are convex bodies for which this is not the case. As far as we know there is no known global upper bound. We show that no convex body has $N=\infty $ N = ∞ and that there are convex bodies for which $N = 6$ N = 6 .     

Finite groups all of whose second maximal subgroups are {\mathcal{H }}_p-groups

Let $G$ be a finite group. A subgroup $H$ of $G$ is called an $\mathcal{H }$ -subgroup of $G$ if $N_G(H)\cap H^g\le H$ for all $g\in G$ . A group $G$ is said to be an ${\mathcal{H }}_p$ -group if every cyclic subgroup of $G$ of prime order or order 4 is an $\mathcal{H }$ -subgroup of $G$ . In this paper, the structure of a finite group all of whose second maximal subgroups are ${\mathcal{H }}_p$ -subgroups has been characterized.     

Weak quadratic overgroups for a class of Lie groups

Let $G$ be a connected and simply connected Lie group with Lie algebra $\mathfrak g $ . We say that a subset $X$ in the set $\mathfrak g ^\star / G$ of coadjoint orbits is convex hull separable when the convex hulls differ for any pair of distinct coadjoint orbits in $X$ . In this paper, we define a class of solvable Lie groups, and we give an explicit construction of an overgroup $G^+$ and a quadratic map $\varphi $ sending each generic orbit in $\mathfrak g ^\star $ to a $G^+$ -orbit in $\mathfrak{g ^+}^\star $ , in such a manner that the set $\varphi (\mathfrak g ^\star _{gen}){/ G^+}$ is convex hull separable. We then call $G^+$ a weak quadratic overgroup for $G$ . Thanks to this construction, we prove that any nilpotent Lie group, with dimension at most 7 admits such a weak quadratic overgroup. Finally, we produce different examples of solvable Lie groups, having weak quadratic overgroups, but which are not in our class of Lie groups and for which usual constructions fail to hold.     

On the existence of Evans potentials

It is shown that, for every noncompact parabolic Riemannian manifold $X$ and every nonpolar compact $K$ in  $X$ , there exists a positive harmonic function on $X\setminus K$ which tends to $\infty $ at infinity. (This is trivial for $\mathbb{R }$ , easy for  $\mathbb{R }^2$ , and known for parabolic Riemann surfaces.) In fact, the statement is proven, more generally, for any noncompact connected Brelot harmonic space  $X$ , where constants are the only positive superharmonic functions and, for every nonpolar compact set  $K$ , there is a symmetric (positive) Green function for $X\setminus K$ . This includes the case of parabolic Riemannian manifolds. Without symmetry, however, the statement may fail. This is shown by an example, where the underlying space is a graph (the union of the parallel half-lines $\left[0,\infty \right)\times \{0\}, \left[0,\infty \right)\times \{1\}$ , and the line segments $\{n\}\times [0,1], n=0,1,2,\dots $ ).     

Inductive topological Hausdorff dimensions and fibers of generic continuous functions

In an earlier paper Buczolich, Elekes and the author introduced a new concept of dimension for metric spaces, the so called topological Hausdorff dimension. They proved that it is precisely the right notion to describe the Hausdorff dimension of the level sets of the generic real-valued continuous function (in the sense of Baire category) defined on a compact metric space $K$ . The goal of this paper is to determine the Hausdorff dimension of the fibers of the generic continuous function from $K$ to $\mathbb {R}^n$ . In order to do so, we define the $n$ th inductive topological Hausdorff dimension, $\dim _{t^nH} K$ . Let $\dim _H K,\,\dim _t K$ and $C_n(K)$ denote the Hausdorff and topological dimension of $K$ and the Banach space of the continuous functions from $K$ to $\mathbb {R}^n$ . We show that $\sup _{y\in \mathbb {R}^n} \dim _{H}f^{-1}(y) = \dim _{t^nH} K -n$ for the generic $f \in C_n(K)$ , provided that $\dim _t K\ge n$ , otherwise every fiber is finite. In order to prove the above theorem we give some equivalent definitions for the inductive topological Hausdorff dimensions, which can be interesting in their own right. Here we use techniques coming from the theory of topological dimension. We show that the supremum is actually attained on the left hand side of the above equation. We characterize those compact metric spaces $K$ for which $\dim _{H} f^{-1}(y)=\dim _{t^nH}K-n$ for the generic $f\in C_n(K)$ and the generic $y\in f(K)$ . We also generalize a result of Kirchheim by showing that if $K$ is self-similar and $\dim _t K\ge n$ then $\dim _{H} f^{-1}(y)=\dim _{t^nH}K-n$ for the generic $f\in C_n(K)$ for every $y\in {{\mathrm{int}}}f(K)$ .     

On minimal non-M_rC-groups

A group $G$ is said to be a minimax group if it has a finite series whose factors satisfy either the minimal or the maximal condition. Let $D(G)$ denotes the subgroup of $G$ generated by all the Chernikov divisible normal subgroups of $G$ . If $G$ is a soluble-by-finite minimax group and if $D(G)=1$ , then $G$ is said to be a reduced minimax group. Also $G$ is said to be an $ M_{r}C$ -group (respectively, $PC$ -group), if $G/C_{G} \left(x^{G}\right)$ is a reduced minimax (respectively, polycyclic-by-finite) group for all $x\in G$ . These are generalisations of the familiar property of being an $FC$ -group. Finally, if $\mathfrak X $ is a class of groups, then $G$ is said to be a minimal non- $\mathfrak X $ -group if it is not an $\mathfrak X $ -group but all of whose proper subgroups are $\mathfrak X $ -groups. Belyaev and Sesekin characterized minimal non- $FC$ -groups when they have a non-trivial finite or abelian factor group. Here we prove that if $G$ is a group that has a proper subgroup of finite index, then $G$ is a minimal non- $M_{r}C$ -group (respectively, non- $PC$ -group) if, and only if, $G$ is a minimal non- $FC$ -group.     

Complemented subgroups and the structure of finite groups

Let $p$ be the smallest prime divisor of the order of a finite group $G$ . We examine the structure of $G$ under the hypothesis that $p$ -subgroups of $G$ of certain orders are complemented in $G$ . In particular, we extend some recent results.     

Variance asymptotics for random polytopes in smooth convex bodies

Let $K \subset \mathbb R ^d$ be a smooth convex set and let $\mathcal{P }_{\lambda }$ be a Poisson point process on $\mathbb R ^d$ of intensity ${\lambda }$ . The convex hull of $\mathcal{P }_{\lambda }\cap K$ is a random convex polytope $K_{\lambda }$ . As ${\lambda }\rightarrow \infty $ , we show that the variance of the number of $k$ -dimensional faces of $K_{\lambda }$ , when properly scaled, converges to a scalar multiple of the affine surface area of $K$ . Similar asymptotics hold for the variance of the number of $k$ -dimensional faces for the convex hull of a binomial process in $K$ .     

On some primary subgroups and the structure of finite groups

Suppose that $G$ is a finite group and $H$ is a subgroup of $G$ . $H$ is said to be an $s$ -quasinormally embedded in $G$ if for each prime $p$ dividing the order of $H$ , a Sylow $p$ -subgroup of $H$ is also a Sylow $p$ -subgroup of some $S$ -quasinormal subgroup of $G$ ; $H$ is said to be $c$ -normal in $G$ if $G$ has a normal subgroup $T$ such that $G=HT$ and $H\cap T\le H_{G}$ , where $H_{G}$ is the normal core of $H$ in $G$ . We fix in every non-cyclic Sylow subgroup $P$ of $G$ some subgroup $D$ satisfying $1<|D|<|P|$ and study the structure of $G$ under the assumption that every subgroup $H$ of $P$ with $|H|=|D|$ is either $s$ -quasinormally embedded or $c$ -normal in $G$ . Some recent results are generalized and unified.     

Feebly compact paratopological groups and real-valued functions

We present several examples of feebly compact Hausdorff paratopological groups (i.e., groups with continuous multiplication) which provide answers to a number of questions posed in the literature. It turns out that a 2-pseudocompact, feebly compact Hausdorff paratopological group $G$ can fail to be a topological group. Our group $G$ has the Baire property, is Fréchet–Urysohn, but it is not precompact. It is well known that every infinite pseudocompact topological group contains a countable non-closed subset. We construct an infinite feebly compact Hausdorff paratopological group $G$ all countable subsets of which are closed. Another peculiarity of the group $G$ is that it contains a nonempty open subsemigroup $C$ such that $C^{-1}$ is closed and discrete, i.e., the inversion in $G$ is extremely discontinuous. We also prove that for every continuous real-valued function $g$ on a feebly compact paratopological group $G$ , one can find a continuous homomorphism $\varphi $ of $G$ onto a second countable Hausdorff topological group $H$ and a continuous real-valued function $h$ on $H$ such that $g=h\circ \varphi $ . In particular, every feebly compact paratopological group is $\mathbb{R }_3$ -factorizable. This generalizes a theorem of Comfort and Ross established in 1966 for real-valued functions on pseudocompact topological groups.     

Discrete subgroups of locally definable groups

We work in the category of locally definable groups in an o-minimal expansion of a field. Eleftheriou and Peterzil conjectured that every definably generated abelian connected group $G$ in this category is a cover of a definable group. We prove that this is the case under a natural convexity assumption inspired by the same authors, which in fact gives a necessary and sufficient condition. The proof is based on the study of the zero-dimensional compatible subgroups of $G$ . Given a locally definable connected group $G$ (not necessarily definably generated), we prove that the $n$ -torsion subgroup of $G$ is finite and that every zero-dimensional compatible subgroup of $G$ has finite rank. Under a convexity hypothesis, we show that every zero-dimensional compatible subgroup of $G$ is finitely generated.     

SK_1 and Lie algebras

We investigate the vanishing of the group $SK_1(\Lambda (G))$ for the Iwasawa algebra $\Lambda (G)$ of a pro- $p$ $p$ -adic Lie group $G$ (with $p \ne 2$ ). We reduce this vanishing to a linear algebra problem for Lie algebras over arbitrary rings, which we solve for Chevalley orders in split reductive Lie algebras.     

Equivariant entire solutions to the elliptic system \Delta u=W_u(u) for general G-invariant potentials

We consider the system $\Delta u - W_u(u) = 0$ , where $u: \mathbb R ^n \rightarrow \mathbb R ^m$ , for potentials $W: \mathbb R ^m \rightarrow \mathbb R $ that possess $N$ global minima and are invariant under a finite reflection group $G$ . We prove the existence of nontrivial $G$ -equivariant entire solutions connecting the $N$ minima of $W$ . Our proof only requires the minima of $W$ to be nondegenerate and an assumption on the behavior of $W$ for large $u$ .     

On S-permutably embedded subgroups of finite groups

A subgroup $A$ of a finite group $G$ is said to be $S$ -permutably embedded in $G$ if for each prime $p$ dividing the order of $A$ , every Sylow $p$ -subgroup of $A$ is a Sylow $p$ -subgroup of some $S$ -permutable subgroup of $G$ . In this paper we determine how the $S$ -permutable embedding of several families of subgroups of a finite group influences its structure.     

A Helly-type theorem for intersections of orthogonally starshaped sets in \mathbb R^d

Let $\mathcal K$ be a finite family of orthogonal polytopes in $\mathbb R^d$ such that, for every nonempty subfamily $\mathcal K^\prime $ of $\mathcal K, \cap \{K : K$ in $\mathcal K^\prime \}$ , if nonempty, is a finite union of boxes whose intersection graph is a tree. Assume that every $d + 1$ (not necessarily distinct) members of $\mathcal K$ meet in a (nonempty) staircase starshaped set. Then $S \equiv \cap \{ K : K$ in $\mathcal K\}$ is nonempty and staircase starshaped.     

Subgroup properties of pro-p extensions of centralizers

We prove that a finitely generated pro- $p$ group acting on a pro- $p$ tree $T$ with procyclic edge stabilizers is the fundamental pro- $p$ group of a finite graph of pro- $p$ groups with vertex groups being stabilizers of certain vertices of $T$ and edge groups (when non-trivial) being stabilizers of certain edges of $T$ , in the following two situations: (1) the action is $n$ -acylindrical, i.e., any non-identity element fixes not more than $n$ edges; (2) the group $G$ is generated by its vertex stabilizers. This theorem is applied to obtain several results about pro- $p$ groups from the class $\mathcal L $ defined and studied in Kochloukova and Zalesskii (Math Z 267:109–128, 2011) as pro- $p$ analogues of limit groups. We prove that every pro- $p$ group $G$ from the class $\mathcal L $ is the fundamental pro- $p$ group of a finite graph of pro- $p$ groups with infinite procyclic or trivial edge groups and finitely generated vertex groups; moreover, all non-abelian vertex groups are from the class $\mathcal L $ of lower level than $G$ with respect to the natural hierarchy. This allows us to give an affirmative answer to questions 9.1 and 9.3 in Kochloukova and Zalesskii (Math Z 267:109–128, 2011). Namely, we prove that a group $G$ from the class $\mathcal L $ has Euler–Poincaré characteristic zero if and only if it is abelian, and if every abelian pro- $p$ subgroup of $G$ is procyclic and $G$ itself is not procyclic, then $\mathrm{def}(G)\ge 2$ . Moreover, we prove that $G$ satisfies the Greenberg–Stallings property and any finitely generated non-abelian subgroup of $G$ has finite index in its commensurator.