arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Michael Larsen.
We consider lifting of mod p representations to mod p^2 representations in the setting of representations of (i) finite groups; (ii) absolute Galois groups of abstract fields; and (iii) absolute Galois groups of local and global fields.
If A and B are abelian varieties over a number field K such that there are non-trivial geometric homomorphisms of abelian varieties between reductions of A and B at most primes of K, then there exists a non-trivial (geometric) homomorphism from A to B defined over an algebraic closure of K.
For a very general product $A$ of seven or more elliptic curves, every rational curve on the Kummer variety of $A$ projects trivially onto the Kummer variety of at least one of its factors. As a consequence, a very general member of certain families of abelian varieties parametrized by connected Shimura varieties of unitary type has the property that its Kummer variety has no rational curves.
In recent years there has been significant progress in the study of products of subsets of finite groups and of finite simple groups in particular. In this paper we consider which families of finite simple groups $G$ have the property that for each $ε> 0$ there exists $N > 0$ such that, if $|G| \ge N$ and $S, T$ are normal subsets of $G$ with at least $ε|G|$ elements each, then every non-trivial element of $G$ is the product of an element of $S$ and an element of $T$. We show that this holds in a strong sense for finite simple groups of Lie type of bounded rank, while it does not hold for alternating groups or groups of the form ${\mathrm{PSL}}_n(q)$ where $q$ is fixed and $n$ tends to infinity. Our second main result is that any element in a transitive permutation representation of a sufficiently large finite simple group is a product of two derangements.
Let $A$ be a residually finite dimensional algebra (not necessarily associative) over a field $k$. Suppose first that $k$ is algebraically closed. We show that if $A$ satisfies a homogeneous almost identity $Q$, then $A$ has an ideal of finite codimension satisfying the identity $Q$. Using well known results of Zelmanov, we conclude that, if a residually finite dimensional Lie algebra $L$ over $k$ is almost $d$-Engel, then $L$ has a nilpotent (resp. locally nilpotent) ideal of finite codimension if char $k=0$ (resp. char $k > 0$). Next, suppose that $k$ is finite (so $A$ is residually finite). We prove that, if $A$ satisfies a homogeneous probabilistic identity $Q$, then $Q$ is a coset identity of $A$. Moreover, if $Q$ is multilinear, then $Q$ is an identity of some finite index ideal of $A$. Along the way we show that, if $Q\in k\langle x_1,\ldots,x_n\rangle$ has degree $d$, and $A$ is a finite $k$-algebra such that the probability that $Q(a_1, \ldots , a_n)=0$ (where $a_i \in A$ are randomly chosen) is at least $1-2^{-d}$, then $Q$ is an identity of $A$. This solves a ring-theoretic analogue of a (still open) group-theoretic problem posed by Dixon.
We say a power series $\sum_{n=0}^\infty a_n q^n$ is multiplicative if the function $n\mapsto a_n/a_1$ ($n\ge 1$) is so. In this paper, we consider multiplicative power series $f$ such that $f^2$ is also multiplicative. We find various solutions for which $f$ is a rational function or a theta series and prove that the complete set of solutions is the locus of a (probably reducible) affine variety over C. The precise determination of this variety is a finite computational problem but seems to be outside the reach of current computer algebra systems. The proof of the theorem depends on a bound on the logarithmic capacity of the Mandelbrot set.
We define the notion of an almost polynomial identity of an associative algebra $R$, and show that its existence implies the existence of an actual polynomial identity of $R$. A similar result is also obtained for Lie algebras and Jordan algebras. We also prove related quantitative results for simple and semisimple algebras.
Let $\{ρ_\ell\}_\ell$ be the system of $\ell$-adic representations arising from the $i$th $\ell$-adic cohomology of a complete smooth variety $X$ defined over a number field $K$. Let $Γ_\ell$ and $\mathbf{G}_\ell$ be respectively the image and the algebraic monodromy group of $ρ_\ell$. We prove that the reductive quotient of $\mathbf{G}_\ell^\circ$ is unramified over every degree 12 totally ramified extension of $\mathbb{Q}_\ell$ for all sufficiently large $\ell$. We give a necessary and sufficient condition $(\ast)$ on $\{ρ_\ell\}_\ell$ such that for all sufficiently large $\ell$, the subgroup $Γ_\ell$ is in some sense maximal compact in $\mathbf{G}_\ell(\mathbb{Q}_\ell)$. This is used to deduce Galois maximality results for $\ell$-adic representations arising from abelian varieties (for all $i$) and hyperkähler varieties ($i=2$) defined over finitely generated fields over $\mathbb{Q}$.
The probabilistic Waring problem for finite simple groups asks whether every word of the form $w_1w_2$, where $w_1$ and $w_2$ are non-trivial words in disjoint sets of variables, induces almost uniform distribution on finite simple groups with respect to the $L^1$ norm. Our first main result provides a positive solution to this problem. We also provide a geometric characterization of words inducing almost uniform distribution on finite simple groups of Lie type of bounded rank, and study related random walks. Our second main result concerns the probabilistic $L^{\infty}$ Waring problem for finite simple groups. We show that for every $l \ge 1$ there exists $N = N(l)$, such that if $w_1, \ldots , w_N$ are non-trivial words of length at most $l$ in pairwise disjoint sets of variables, then their product $w_1 \cdots w_N$ is almost uniform on finite simple groups with respect to the $L^{\infty}$ norm. The dependence of $N$ on $l$ is genuine. This result implies that, for every word $w = w_1 \cdots w_N$ as above, the word map induced by $w$ on a semisimple algebraic group over an arbitrary field is a flat morphism. Applications to representation varieties, subgroup growth, and random generation are also presented.
If w is a word in d>1 letters and G is a finite group, evaluation of w on a uniformly randomly chosen d-tuple in G gives a random variable with values in G, which may or may not be uniform. It is known that if G ranges over finite simple groups of given root system and characteristic, a positive proportion of words w give a distribution which approaches uniformity in the limit as |G| goes to infinity. In this paper, we show that the proportion is in fact 1.
We prove that for every at most countable family $\{f_k(x)\}$ of real functions on $[0,1)$ there is a single-valued real function $F(x)$, $x\in[0,1)$, such that the Hausdorff dimension of the graph $Γ$ of $F(x)$ equals 2, and for every $C\in\mathbb R$ and every $k$, the intersection of $Γ$ with the graph of the function $f_k(x)+C$ consists of at most one point. We also construct a family of functions of cardinality continuum and a function $F$ with similar properties.
Let $K$ be a complete discrete valuation field with finite residue field of characteristic $p$, and let $D$ be a central division algebra over $K$ of finite index $d$. Thirty years ago, Suslin and Yufryakov showed that for all prime numbers $\ell$ different from $p$ and integers $j \geq 1$ , there exists a "reduced norm" isomorphism of $\ell$-adic $K$-groups $\operatorname{Nrd}_{D/K} \colon K_j(D,\mathbb{Z}_{\ell}) \to K_j(K,\mathbb{Z}_{\ell})$ such that $d \cdot \operatorname{Nrd}_{D/K}$ is equal to the norm homomorphism $N_{D/K}$. The purpose of this paper is to prove the analogous result for the $p$-adic $K$-groups. To do so, we employ the cyclotomic trace map to topological cyclic homology and show that there exists a "reduced trace" equivalence $\operatorname{Trd}_{A/S} \colon \operatorname{THH}(A\,|\,D,\mathbb{Z}_p) \to \operatorname{THH}(S\,|\,K,\mathbb{Z}_p)$ between two $p$-complete cyclotomic spectra associated with $D$ and $K$, respectively. Interestingly, we show that if $p$ divides $d$, then it is not possible to choose said equivalence such that, as maps of cyclotomic spectra, $d \cdot \operatorname{Trd}_{A/S}$ agrees with the trace $\operatorname{Tr}_{A/S}$, although this is possible as maps of spectra with $\mathbb{T}$-action.
This paper is a continuation of [GLT], which develops a level theory and establishes strong character bounds for finite simple groups of linear and unitary type in the case that the centralizer of the element has small order compared to $|G|$ in a logarithmic sense. We strengthen the results of [GLT] and extend them to all groups of classical type.
This paper surveys the methods that have been used to attack the conjecture, still open, that an abelian variety over a characteristic $0$ field with finitely generated Galois group is always of infinite rank.
This paper contributes to the study of the fibers of the commutator map on special linear groups in characteristic zero. Specifically, we show that the fibers over non-central elements all have the same dimension. Also we explain that the fibers over central elements can be of larger dimension and compute how large. We use the character tables of finite general linear groups constructed by J.A. Green to count solutions to the commutator equation $[x,y]=g$ over finite fields and use algebraic geometry to go from characteristic $p$ to characteristic $0$. To deal with fibers over central elements, we compute the orbits of the conjugation action of $\mathrm{GL}_n$ on these fibers.
Let $K_0(\mathrm{Var}_{\mathbb{Q}})[1/\mathbb{L}]$ denote the Grothendieck ring of $\mathbb{Q}$-varieties with the Lefschetz class inverted. We show that there exists a K3 surface X over $\mathbb{Q}$ such that the motivic zeta function $ζ_X(t) := \sum_n [\mathrm{Sym}^n X]t^n$ regarded as an element in $K_0(\mathrm{Var}_{\mathbb{Q}})[1/\mathbb{L}][[t]]$ is not a rational function in $t$, thus disproving a conjecture of Denef and Loeser.
If $R$ is the ring of integers of a number field, then there exists a polynomial parametrization of the set $\text{SL}_2(R)$, i.e., an element $A \in \text{SL}_2(\mathbb{Z}[x_1,\ldots,x_n])$ such that every element of $\text{SL}_2(R)$ is obtained by specializing $A$ via some homomorphism $\mathbb{Z}[x_1,\ldots,x_n]\to R$.
Let $f\in \mathbb{Q}(x)$ be a non-constant rational function. We consider "Waring's Problem for $f(x)$," i.e., whether every element of $\bbq$ can be written as a bounded sum of elements of $\{f(a)\mid a\in \mathbb{Q}\}$. For rational functions of degree $2$, we give necessary and sufficient conditions. For higher degrees, we prove that every polynomial of odd degree and every odd Laurent polynomial satisfies Waring's Problem. We also consider the "Easier Waring's Problem": whether every element of $\mathbb{Q}$ can be represented as a bounded sum of elements of $\{\pm f(a)\mid a\in \mathbb{Q}\}$.