arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Miklos Abert.
We show that every countable non-abelian free group $Γ$ admits a spherically transitive action on a rooted tree $T$ such that the action of $Γ$ on the boundary of $T$ is not essentially free. This reproves a result of Bergeron and Gaboriau. The existence of such an action answers a question of Grigorchuk, Nekrashevich and Sushchanskii.
We show that it is consistent with the axioms of set theory that every infinite profinite group G possesses a closed subset X of Haar measure zero such that less than continuum many translates of X cover G. This answers a question of Elekes and Toth and by their work settles the problem for all infinite compact topological groups.
We provide lower estimates on the minimal number of generators of the profinite completion of free products of finite groups. In particular, we show that if C_1,...,C_n are finite cyclic groups then there exists a finite group G which is generated by isomorphic copies of C_1,...,C_n and the minimal number of generators of G is n.
Let T be a k-regular tree (k>2) and A its automorphism group. We analyze a generic finitely generated subgroup Gamma of A. We show that Gamma is free and establish a trichotomy on the closure of Gamma: it is either discrete, compact or has index at most 2 in A.
We give an example of an infinite family of finite groups $G_n$ such that each $G_n$ can be generated by 2 elements and the diameter of every Cayley graph of $G_n$ is $O(\log (| G_{n}|))$. This answers a question of Lubotzky.
We show that for any finite group $G$ and for any $d$ there exists a word $w\in F_{d}$ such that a $d$-tuple in $G$ satisfies $w$ if and only if it generates a solvable subgroup. In particular, if $G$ itself is not solvable, then it cannot be obtained as a quotient of the one relator group $F_{d}/ $. As a corollary, the probability that a word is satisfied in a fixed non-solvable group can be made arbitrarily small, answering a question of Alon Amit.
We prove that a permutation group in which different finite sets have different stabilizers cannot satisfy any group law. For locally compact topological groups with this property we show that almost all finite subsets of the group generate free subgroups. We derive consequences of these theorems on Thompson's group $F$, weakly branch groups, automorphism groups of regular trees and profinite groups with alternating composition factors of unbounded degree.
We explore the structure of the p-adic automorphism group Gamma of the infinite rooted regular tree. We determine the asymptotic order of a typical element, answering an old question of Turan. We initiate the study of a general dimension theory of groups acting on rooted trees. We describe the relationship between dimension and other properties of groups such as solvability, existence of dense free subgroups and the normal subgroup structure. We show that subgroups of Gamma generated by three random elements are full-dimensional and that there exist finitely generated subgroups of arbitrary dimension. Specifically, our results solve an open problem of Shalev and answer a question of Sidki.