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We deal with some pcf investigations mostly motivated by abelian group theory problems and deal their applications to test problems (we expect reasonably wide applications). We prove almost always the existence of aleph_omega-free abelian groups with trivial dual, i.e. no non-trivial homomorphisms to the integers. This relies on investigation of pcf; more specifically, for this we prove that almost always there are F subseteq lambda^kappa which are quite free and has black boxes. The almost always means that there are strong restrictions on cardinal arithmetic if the universe fails this, the restrictions are everywhere. Also we replace Abelian groups by R-modules, so in some sense our advantage over earlier results becomes clearer.
The present survey aims at being a list of Conjectures and Problems in an area of model-theoretic algebra wide open for research, not a list of known results. To keep the text compact, it focuses on structures of finite Morley rank, although the same questions can be asked about other classes of objects, for example, groups definable in $omega$-stable and $o$-minimal theories. In many cases, answers are not known even in the classical category of algebraic groups over algebraically closed fields.
Regular groups and fields are common generalizations of minimal and quasi-minimal groups and fields, so the conjectures that minimal or quasi-minimal fields are algebraically closed have their common generalization to the conjecture that each regular field is algebraically closed. Standard arguments show that a generically stable regular field is algebraically closed. Let $K$ be a regular field which is not generically stable and let $p$ be its global generic type. We observe that if $K$ has a finite extension $L$ of degree $n$, then $p^{(n)}$ has unbounded orbit under the action of the multiplicative group of $L$. Known to be true in the minimal context, it remains wide open whether regular, or even quasi-minimal, groups are abelian. We show that if it is not the case, then there is a counter-example with a unique non-trivial conjugacy class, and we notice that a classical group with one non-trivial conjugacy class is not quasi-minimal, because the centralizers of all elements are uncountable. Then we construct a group of cardinality $omega_1$ with only one non-trivial conjugacy class and such that the centralizers of all non-trivial elements are countable.
We introduce and study model-theoretic connected components of rings as an analogue of model-theoretic connected components of definable groups. We develop their basic theory and use them to describe both the definable and classical Bohr compactifications of rings. We then use model-theoretic connected components to explicitly calculate Bohr compactifications of some classical matrix groups, such as the discrete Heisenberg group $UT_3(Z)$, the continuous Heisenberg group $UT_3(R)$, and, more generally, groups of upper unitriangular and invertible upper triangular matrices over unital rings.
We prove that the theory of the $p$-adics ${mathbb Q}_p$ admits elimination of imaginaries provided we add a sort for ${rm GL}_n({mathbb Q}_p)/{rm GL}_n({mathbb Z}_p)$ for each $n$. We also prove that the elimination of imaginaries is uniform in $p$. Using $p$-adic and motivic integration, we deduce the uniform rationality of certain formal zeta functions arising from definable equivalence relations. This also yields analogous results for definable equivalence relations over local fields of positive characteristic. The appendix contains an alternative proof, using cell decomposition, of the rationality (for fixed $p$) of these formal zeta functions that extends to the subanalytic context. As an application, we prove rationality and uniformity results for zeta functions obtained by counting twist isomorphism classes of irreducible representations of finitely generated nilpotent groups; these are analogous to similar results of Grunewald, Segal and Smith and of du Sautoy and Grunewald for subgroup zeta functions of finitely generated nilpotent groups.
A group $G$ is called Jordan if there is a positive integer $J=J_G$ such that every finite subgroup $mathcal{B}$ of $G$ contains a commutative subgroup $mathcal{A}subset mathcal{B}$ such that $mathcal{A}$ is normal in $mathcal{B}$ and the index $[mathcal{B}:mathcal{A}] le J$ (V.L. Popov). In this paper we deal with Jordaness properties of the groups $Bir(X)$ of birational automorphisms of irreducible smooth projective varieties $X$ over an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero. It is known (Yu. Prokhorov - C. Shramov) that $Bir(X)$ is Jordan if $X$ is non-uniruled. On the other hand, the second named author proved that $Bir(X)$ is not Jordan if $X$ is birational to a product of the projective line and a positive-dimensional abelian variety. We prove that $Bir(X)$ is Jordan if (uniruled) $X$ is a conic bundle over a non-uniruled variety $Y$ but is not birational to a product of $Y$ and the projective line. (Such a conic bundle exists only if $dim(Y)ge 2$.) When $Y$ is an abelian surface, this Jordaness property result gives an answer to a question of Prokhorov and Shramov.