arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Francesco Matucci.
We prove that the asynchronous rational group defined by Grigorchuk, Nekrashevych, and Sushchanskii is simple and not finitely generated. Our proofs also apply to certain subgroups of the rational group, such as the group of all rational bilipschitz homeomorphisms.
We consider generalisations of Thompson's group $V$, denoted by $V_r(Σ)$, which also include the groups of Higman, Stein and Brin. It was shown by the authors in [20] that under some mild conditions these groups and centralisers of their finite subgroups are of type $\mathrm{F}_\infty$. Under more general conditions we show that the groups $V_r(Σ)$ are finitely generated and, under the mild conditions mentioned above, we see that they are finitely presented and give a recipe to find explicit presentations. For the centralisers of finite subgroups we find a suitable infinite presentation and then apply a general procedure to shorten this presentation. In the appendix, we give a proof of this general shortening procedure.
We prove that every finitely-generated right-angled Artin group can be embedded into some Brin-Thompson group $nV$. It follows that many other groups can be embedded into some $nV$ (e.g., any finite extension of any of Haglund and Wise's special groups), and that various decision problems involving subgroups of $nV$ are unsolvable.
We prove that Claas Röver's Thompson-Grigorchuk simple group $V\mathcal{G}$ has type $F_\infty$. The proof involves constructing two complexes on which $V\mathcal{G}$ acts: a simplicial complex analogous to the Stein complex for $V$, and a polysimiplical complex analogous to the Farley complex for $V$. We then analyze the descending links of the polysimplicial complex, using a theorem of Belk and Forrest to prove increasing connectivity.
We consider generalisations of Thompson's group $V$, denoted $V_r(Σ)$, which also include the groups of Higman, Stein and Brin. We show that, under some mild hypotheses, $V_r(Σ)$ is the full automorphism group of a Cantor-algebra. Under some further minor restrictions, we prove that these groups are of type $\mathrm{F}_\infty$ and that this implies that also centralisers of finite subgroups are of type $\mathrm{F}_\infty$.
Lehnert and Schweitzer show in [20] that R. Thompson's group $V$ is a co-context-free ($co\mathcal{CF}$) group, thus implying that all of its finitely generated subgroups are also $co\mathcal{CF}$ groups. Also, Lehnert shows in his thesis that $V$ embeds inside the $co\mathcal{CF}$ group $\mathrm{QAut}(\mathcal{T}_{2,c})$, which is a group of particular bijections on the vertices of an infinite binary $2$-edge-colored tree, and he conjectures that $\mathrm{QAut}(\mathcal{T}_{2,c})$ is a universal $co\mathcal{CF}$ group. We show that $\mathrm{QAut}(\mathcal{T}_{2,c})$ embeds into $V$, and thus obtain a new form for Lehnert's conjecture. Following up on these ideas, we begin work to build a representation theory into R. Thompson's group $V$. In particular we classify precisely which Baumslag-Solitar groups embed into $V$.
The intersection growth of a group $G$ is the asymptotic behavior of the index of the intersection of all subgroups of $G$ with index at most $n$, and measures the Hausdorff dimension of $G$ in profinite metrics. We study intersection growth in free groups and special linear groups and relate intersection growth to quantifying residual finiteness.
Intersection growth concerns the asymptotic behavior of the index of the intersection of all subgroups of a group that have index at most n. In this note we show that the intersection growth of some groups may not be a nicely behaved function by showing the following seemingly contradictory results: (a) for any group G the intersection growth function i_G(n) is super linear infinitely often; and (b) for any increasing function f there exists a group G such that i_G below f infinitely often.
We solve the twisted conjugacy problem on Thompson's group F. We also exhibit orbit undecidable subgroups of Aut(F), and give a proof that Aut(F) and Aut_+(F) are orbit decidable provided a certain conjecture on Thompson's group T is true. By using general criteria introduced by Bogopolski, Martino and Ventura in [5], we construct a family of free extensions of F where the conjugacy problem is unsolvable. As a byproduct of our techniques, we give a new proof of a result of Bleak-Fel'shtyn-Goncalves in [4] showing that F has property R_\infty, and which can be extended to show that Thompson's group T also has property R_\infty.
We describe an explicit relationship between strand diagrams and piecewise-linear functions for elements of Thompson's group F. Using this correspondence, we investigate the dynamics of elements of F, and we show that conjugacy of one-bump functions can be described by a Mather-type invariant.
Let n be bigger than 1 and let A be an element in the Higman-Thompson group V_n. We study the structure of the centralizer of a in V_n through a careful analysis of the action of the group generated by A on the Cantor set C. We make use of revealing tree pairs as developed by Brin and Salazar from which we derive discrete train tracks to assist us in our analysis. A consequence of our structure theorem is that centralizers are finitely generated. Along the way we give a short argument using revealing tree pairs which shows that cyclic groups are undistorted in V_n.
We describe the relation between two characterizations of conjugacy in groups of piecewise-linear homeomorphisms, discovered by Brin and Squier in [2] and Kassabov and Matucci in [5]. Thanks to the interplay between the techniques, we produce a simplified point of view of conjugacy that allows us to easily recover centralizers and lends itself to generalization.
In this partly expository paper, we study the set A of groups of orientation-preserving homeomorphisms of the circle S^1 which do not admit non-abelian free subgroups. We use classical results about homeomorphisms of the circle and elementary dynamical methods to derive various new and old results about the groups in A. Of the known results, we include some results from a family of results of Beklaryan and Malyutin, and we also give a new proof of a theorem of Margulis. Our primary new results include a detailed classification of the solvable subgroups of R. Thompson's group T .
We find a lower bound to the size of finite groups detecting a given word in the free group, more precisely we construct a word w_n of length n in non-abelian free groups with the property that w_n is the identity on all finite quotients of size ~ n^{2/3} or less. This improves on a previous result of Bou-Rabee and McReynolds quantifying the lower bound of the residual finiteness of free groups.
In his papers [2], [3] Brin introduced the higher dimensional Thompson groups nV which are generalizations to the Thompson's group V of self-homeomorphisms of the Cantor set and found a finite set of generators and relations in the case n = 2. We show how to generalize his construction to obtain a finite presentation for every positive integer n. As a corollary, we obtain another proof that the groups nV are simple (first proved by Brin in [4]).
We prove that the p-Quillen complex of a finite solvable group with cyclic derived group is Cohen-Macaulay, if p is an odd prime. If p = 2 we prove a similar conclusion, but there is a discussion to be made.
Guba and Sapir asked if the simultaneous conjugacy problem was solvable in Diagram Groups or, at least, for Thompson's group F. We give a solution to the latter question using elementary techniques which rely purely on the description of F as the group of piecewise linear orientation-preserving homeomorphisms of the unit interval. The techniques we develop extend the ones used by Brin and Squier allowing us to compute roots and centralizers as well. Moreover, these techniques can be generalized to solve the same question in larger groups of piecewise-linear homeomorphisms.
This paper shows that an eavesdropper can always recover efficiently the private key of one of the two parts of the public key cryptography protocol introduced by Shpilrain and Ushakov in [9]. Thus an eavesdropper can always recover the shared secret key, making the protocol insecure.