arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Luca Sabatini.
Given an abstract group $G$, we study the function $ab_n(G) := \sup_{|G:H| \leq n} |H/[H,H]|$. If $G$ has no abelian composition factors, then $ab_n(G)$ is bounded by a polynomial: as a consequence, we find a sharp upper bound for the representation growth of these groups.
Let the group $G$ act transitively on the finite set $Ω$, and let $S \subseteq G$ be closed under taking inverses. The Schreier graph $Sch(G \circlearrowleft Ω,S)$ is the graph with vertex set $Ω$ and edge set $\{ (ω,ω^s) : ω\in Ω, s \in S \}$. In this paper, we show that random Schreier graphs on $C \log|Ω|$ elements exhibit a (two-sided) spectral gap with high probability, magnifying a well known theorem of Alon and Roichman for Cayley graphs. On the other hand, depending on the particular action of $G$ on $Ω$, we give a lower bound on the number of elements which are necessary to provide a spectral gap. We use this method to estimate the spectral gap when $G$ is nilpotent.
We show that every finite group $G$ of size at least $3$ has a nilpotent subgroup of class at most $2$ and size at least $|G|^{1/32\log\log|G|}$. This answers a question of Pyber, and is essentially best possible.
We show the existence of an absolute constant $α>0$ such that, for every $k \geq 3$, $G:=\mathop{\mathrm{Sym}}(k)$, and for every $H \leqslant G$ of index at least $3$, one has $|H/[H,H]| \leq |G:H|^{α/ \log \log |G:H|}$. This inequality is the best possible for the symmetric groups, and we conjecture that it is the best possible for every family of arbitrarily large finite groups.
Given a finite group $G$ and a generating set $S \subseteq G$, the diameter $diam(G,S)$ is the least integer $n$ such that every element of $G$ is the product of at most $n$ elements of $S$. In this paper, for bounded $|S|$, we characterize groups with polynomial diameter as the groups with a large abelian section close to the top, precisely of size an exponential portion of the size of the full group. This complements a key result of Breuillard and Tointon. As a consequence, groups with polynomial diameter have many conjugacy classes, and contain a large nilpotent subgroup of class at most $2$.
We show that, for every transitive group $G$ of degree $n\ge 2$, the largest abelian quotient of $G$ has cardinality at most $4^{n/\sqrt{\log_2 n}}$. This gives a positive answer to a 1989 outstanding question of László Kovács and Cheryl Praeger.